Show Notes: 

Nominate someone you know for the SchoolCEO Excellence in School Marketing Award. 

Don’t forget to buy your tickets for the SchoolCEO Conference in Little Rock, AR, this September! 

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. At the start of this season, we shared a SWOT analysis of school communications teams everywhere and determined you all have one big strength in common: you have so many good stories to tell. But what about your weaknesses? Or as I prefer to think of them, your obstacles? Well, most of you don’t have teams of 100 comms people or an enormous budget to work with. So let’s talk about some creative ways to overcome them. 

Last year, SchoolCEO launched our first-ever SchoolCEO Excellence in School Marketing Award. Our 2024 winner was Katherine Crnkovich, a communications officer at Seminole County Public Schools in Florida who won for her innovative approach to school marketing. 

Here’s an example. Katherine wanted to show the community at large how different schools look now than they did when community members were students. The district has 53 career and professional academies. They have kids graduating with their pilot’s license. They have a water reclamation treatment program. So Crnkovich came up with “CTE Rocks on Tour,” her master plan to bring the community to the district’s campuses so that they could see for themselves what a public education looks like now. 

The plan for promoting and hosting CTE Rocks on Tour included yard signs, tour posters, and, an actual tour bus. That’s right—Seminole County chartered a bus to take business partners, legislators, faith-based organizations and more on tours across the district. “They were blown away,” Crnkovich tells us. They got to try the district’s auto welders, check out the 3D model of an HVAC that students use to learn about repairs. They even got free T-shirts with the tour dates on the back that looked just like concert tees. 

And speaking of rock and roll, one of Crnkovich’s favorite parts of this experience was a student-produced music video. In it, students from the barbering department are seen prepping “musicians” for their show. Culinary students play members of the “band”—banging pots and pans like drums. The students premiered their video to the CTE Rocks on Tour visitors, complete with popcorn and what Crnkovich describes as a “movie theater vibe” in the TV production lab.

 It sounds like a pretty extensive undertaking, right? So you might think Katherine relied on a dozen coworkers in comms and a robust budget to pull off CTE Rocks on Tour, right? Wrong.

Katherine works on a team of three people and has a marketing budget of exactly ZERO dollars. But those obstacles didn’t stop her.  

When she first started at Seminole County, Crnkovich noticed the district’s quarterly e-newsletter had a huge audience of 200,000 parents, but they weren’t monetizing it. Katherine decided they needed to turn the newsletter into a revenue stream. 

Crnkovich teamed up with a former teacher who now specializes in helping public schools capitalize on things they’re already doing—like newsletters—to build revenue streams. Now, in addition to sharing district stories and need-to-know information in Seminole County’s newsletter, Crnkovich also includes paid ads. Not only does this help local partners reach their target audiences, but it can also be a value add for parents—whether they’re looking for coupons or just a recommendation for a  good pediatric dentist. They also turned the quarterly into a weekly newsletter, increasing opportunities for ad placements. And it has literally paid off.

So for those of you facing similar obstacles, Crnkovich has some advice: “You have a captive audience, right? Think of people who would benefit from having their brand and their services brought to your families, like pediatricians and orthodontists. What vehicles could you monetize? Do you have a newsletter, too—you can sell ads there and even report back about how many unique clicks they’re getting. Do you have a website? Do you have analytics for that website? Could you program some digital ads? Why not try? You only have money to gain. 

While we’re on the subject, nominations for our 2nd annual SchoolCEO Excellence in School Marketing Award are open now! Visit schoolceo.com to recognize an innovative school marketer in your life. All finalists receive a complimentary ticket to the SchoolCEO Conference on September 24-25th and a profile in a future issue of our magazine! 

Thanks for joining me.