Lodi Unified seeking to improve communication with public

In an effort to ensure parents, staff and the community at-large are kept informed about its activities, the Lodi Unified School District has set four new communication goals for itself.

The district’s board of education on Tuesday night unanimously approved a strategic communication plan that staff said is a “clear and concise framework for engaging and communicating with the Lodi Unified community.”

Chelsea Vongehr, the district’s public information officer, presented the 36-page document to the board Tuesday, and said it will not only help the agency communicate more effectively, but attract more families and students.

“I think that so many fantastic things happen in our district, but we haven’t really been strategic about how we communicate it to the public,” she told the board. “We’ve been better, I think, at being more proactive in those efforts. But I think that we need a plan. We need something to say these are our overarching goals for the next three years, and that we have the implementation strategies to show that we can actually accomplish them.”

Those overarching goals include developing a comprehensive communication plan and supplemental safety communications; improving and strengthening external communication with students, families and the community at-large; improving communication from the district to all staff; and revising policies and procedures regarding public relations and media relations.

Implementation strategies for improved crisis communication include developing public service announcements; provide ongoing training on the Sandy Hook Promise Say Something Anonymous Reporting System; and develop training and supplemental materials that explain lockdown procedures for substitutes and new employees, among other tools.

To improve external communication with parents and students, the district will redesign its website to be more user friendly; establish a clear brand identity to build its image; and refresh brand identities of school sites to build their images, among other strategies.

“A rebrand is one of the biggest things the district needs to do,” Vongehr said. “We don’t have a color scheme or a logo that really represents the district in the

21st century. Our school sites could use some refresher logos as well that really speak to how innovate and creative they are.

Vongehr pointed to the Valley Robotics Academy site logo as an example, which is a one-wheeled robot with the VRA acronym displayed on its front. She said the logo, which is large and placed in the lower left-hand corner of the school’s website, is colorful and attracts the eye, and it can be used in a variety of marketing mediums.

The district does not have a way to digitally market other school sites, she said, because their logos are only tiny jpegs on each individual website.

Superintendent Cathy Nichols-Washer said it has been more than 14 years since the district rebranded itself, and told the board that a rebrand does not mean renaming schools or their mascots.

“We’re not talking about completely rechanging,” she said. “Bear Creek (High School) will still be the Bruins, and Lodi High School will still be the Flames. It will just be creating an image that can be replicated in a manner that can be useful in other venues. Right now some of them are so old, were created so long ago that they cant be translated in today’s environment.”

Strategies for improving internal communication with staff include conducting surveys to gather feedback on how the district can improve; providing consistent and timely updates regarding policy changes; and providing additional opportunities for the board and superintendent to communicate with staff.

Strategies for revising policies and procedures regarding public and media relations include updating social networking guidelines for students; updating social media guidelines for staff; and providing training and technical assistance to staff in public relations, among others.

“If we don’t have a plan, were not really going to accomplish much of anything,” Vongehr said. “We can do little things here and there but we don’t have an overarching goal for our district. We want to attract more talent, we want to communicate better and please our current community members and staff, and also hopefully increase enrollment.”

Board vice president Susan Macfarlane said she was looking forward to making sure that when a district communication is released to the public, it gets repeated correctly. She said there have been many times the board will discuss a topic during a meeting and the result or message gets twisted.

“We can have a meeting and discuss — as an example — we’re not extending the school year by five weeks. And within hours its all over social media, even when the vote was stopped to be clear that we were not extending the calendar year,” she said. “But yet somehow that’s what gets out. So I’m really anxious to see how we keep our communication clear and direct based on decisions we make.”

Parent Tom Moccia was supportive of the new plan, and was glad to see the district plans to redesign its website.

“I think this past year has shown just how important the communication plan is,” he said.

“We’ve all seen what happens when pieces of information get put out on social media. I’m an IT professional myself, and I think the website is difficult to navigate at best. So those that are not in IT, I can imagine how difficult the website has been for them.”

The complete communication plan can be viewed online at www.tinyurl.com/LUSDmktplan.