Show Notes: 

For more great ways to turn staff into storytellers, read: Who’s Telling Your Story. 

See all of the results from our 2024 study: What Parents Want. 

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. Today, let’s talk about communications site reps. Many districts suffer from small comms teams and even if you have a big district with a team of ten, chances are you’re still spread a little thin. Our recent original survey “What Parents Want” found that parents trust communications from their child’s teacher over principals and central office staff. To me, this suggests that parents may pay more attention to stories shared by teachers than to those shared by the district. Getting them to help you tell your district’s story is a win-win: your comms pros get more help and your families feel more connected to the message.

The next question is, of course, how you do it. We’ve already discussed a couple of ways to get non-admin staff on board with different incentives: The first, collective authorship, gives every single person in the district a chance to make their voice heard, even staff who aren’t usually encouraged to share their stories. And they make it so easy, that even hesitant employees are more willing to share in the spur of a magic moment. The second, brand ambassadorship, offers professional development to those who volunteer to manage their school websites and social media. Today, we’re discussing a third option: hiring site representatives. By offering a small stipend, you can attract teachers and staff who already have an affinity for social media and techy stuff to manage your accounts—which lets you avoid providing extensive training. 

AJ Graffeo, director of communications at Putnam City Schools in Oklahoma, helped start a paid Communications Site Rep program when he was still a comms specialist at the district. Graffeo says they just weren’t getting a lot of information funneling up from the schools, so they wanted to designate a go-to person at all 27 of their sites. 

Putnam City decided to use ESSER funds to start their Communications Site Rep program during the pandemic. The chosen reps were put in charge of managing three avenues each: social media, the website and the public calendar. In addition, they were asked to funnel two stories per month to the district comms team. Graffeo brought everyone together for an orientation at the district office that included brand training, tips for getting more engagement on social media and instructions for operating their school websites on the backend—but unlike Lynette White’s brand ambassador course, Graffeo’s training only took about 90 minutes of everyone’s time. 

​​Putnam City’s stipend started at a flat rate, but after one year they realized that secondary school reps had to do a lot more work than elementary ones because they’re larger and there are so many more extracurricular activities. So the second year they tiered payments to better compensate the reps who were doing more work. 

Putnam City’s district Communications Site Rep program ended in 2024 with the discontinuation of ESSER, but Graffeo says many principals have elected to keep their designated site reps with stipends they are funding with building money—an indicator of just how effective the program was. He also says that because of the system it created, staff members are more readily sending content to his team or telling comms about building-level events so they can attend and capture the content for themselves. 

Graffeo actually got the site rep idea from a previous employer: nearby Broken Arrow Schools, whose site rep program is still going strong. And just this week I talked to a third district in Oklahoma that pays stipends to school site representatives, so if you’re looking for inspiration, just pick up the phone and dial any district with an Oklahoma area code. 

To capture more stories about what’s happening in your schools, the best thing you can do is get teachers on board. To determine how, consider the following questions:

1. What can you afford? There are costs associated with providing a stipend or professional development credits. But a little money goes a long way to support your school and district brands. 
2. What feels safest? Whether you choose to provide extensive training, only grant access to one person per school or moderate every post, determine what safeguards will make district leaders—and contributing staff members—most comfortable.
3. How can technology support you? The easier it is for teachers to tell stories, the more likely they are to do so. An easy-to-use website means teachers can manage it without a degree in IT. If your app lets teachers post to every channel from a single platform, they won’t have to learn half a dozen logins and write the same thing over and over again. If the platforms you’re using aren’t aiding in the storytelling process, perhaps it’s time for an upgrade. 

If you’re interested, you can also check out the article I wrote about storytelling systems for teachers in the Spring 2025 issue of SchoolCEO Magazine. Read it to find out more about all three programs we’ve discussed: collective authorship, brand ambassadors and site reps. I’ve included a link to the issue in our show notes. 

Thanks for joining me.