New set in the works for NPTV channel
LANSDALE >> As a year like no other draws to a close, North Penn’s communications department has big plans for 2021-22, including a new set for some of the district’s most visible teens.
District officials heard a review of that budget this week, including a first look at a new set for the studentrun NPTV channel.
“When you come in here, and you go ‘This is a real studio. It’s not a bunch of cables over here, and a curtain pulled over here, and a window that, oh I didn’t realize that’s what’s going on here’ — the space itself looks like a TV studio,” said district Coordinator of Communications Media Bob Gillmer.
“We’re really excited. The kids are over the moon, over waiting for this, and this is something we should see before the end of the year. We should see it in April/ May,” he said.
As part of an ongoing series of departmental budget presentations, on Tuesday night Gillmer and Director of School and Community Engagement Christine Liberaski gave the school board’s finance committee a preview of their goals for the upcoming year. The $1.7 million budget covers nearly all communications internally and externally, between district staff, students and families, and Liberaski said the past year has shown how communication is more important than ever.
“In a typical year, we do a lot, and in this past year we’ve done more than we could have previously dreamed of,” she said.
“Crisis management, which we got an overload of this year, and all of our social media: we’re talking about the district app, Twitter, Facebook, Safe Arrival (software), and all of our engagement, which in years past consisted of a lot of one-on-one, in-person meetings. This past year, we had to switch to a lot of online meetings.”
Speaking via videoconference to the board’s finance committee, the two outlined how communications department staff have handled everything from emergency notifications to public Q-and-A sessions with administrators and board members, largely online because of the ongoing pandemic. In-person events like summer camps, community education classes, and retirement dinners for staff were largely put on hold over the past year due to COVID-19, but look likely to return to normal soon.
“So far, we’ve been offering everything virtually, but this summer we’re hoping to have in-person camps, and hoping to get community education up in full swing as soon as we possibly can,” Liberaski said.
“Everything associated with the NPSD Alumni Association, from the alumni flag football game, career day, Tshirt sales and so forth, we had to pause on a little bit this year, but we can’t wait to get back in action.”
Retirement dinners for staff are slated to resume this spring with safe distancing guidelines, as are volunteer programs and extended school care, but perhaps the biggest reach the department has is online, as Liberaski showed email alerts from the first days of the pandemic, and Gillmer showed stats for the district’s social channels.
“Starting last March 12, at 2:26 p.m., when we sent out our first email regarding the shutdown of schools, that’s when what our department does changed, and added a whole bunch to our plate,” Liberaski said.
“We used every medium possible to help spread the messages we needed to get to staff, students and the community.”
In 2018-19 the district NPTV station’s YouTube channel drew just shy of 399,000 total views, with one large spike for a November football game, while in 201920 that number climbed to 492,000 and a series of spikes starting in mid-March, as the pandemic arrived.
“This is where our communications, the things we normally do, our school board meetings, the community forums, and updates we had for parents,” all went online and hits rose accordingly, Gillmer said.
Starting last July 1, total hits for the 2020-21 year are already over 1.1 million, or nearly three times the 201819 total, and Gillmer said he estimates the final number could be about 1.5 million by the end of the year.
“Not only are people watching live, but it’s available and accessible, so people can go back and find out something we’ve missed,” he said.
Liberaski added that a revamp of the district’s NPSD.org website that finished “right before we shut down” was perfectly timed, so a new dedicated page for all COVID-related info on closings, case counts and more could be put in one place, easily available from more than 20 different websites, one for each district school, all linked together.
The biggest budget request for the upcoming year is a $450,000 line item to replace 90 projectors in classrooms at three different elementary schools, which Gillmer said builds on prior years’ efforts to streamline and consolidate the technology used across the district. Nine schools currently use the same projector system, while five elementary schools, the three middle schools, and the high school all have at least six different types of projectors, and having unified systems will make repairs, part replacements, and maintenance much easier. The interactive digital projectors are used by teachers to demonstrate lessons both in classrooms and watching from home, Gillmer told the board, and his plans are to upgrade the projection systems in Bridle Path, Walton Farm and Gwynedd Square elementaries this upcoming year, then Oak Park and Gwyn Nor the following year.
“This isn’t like when some of us were in school, and would just see a slide show. This is a major component of instruction, in all classrooms and grades,” board member Christian Fusco said, adding that as a teacher himself, he has seen that projectors are “the main tool” teachers use in classrooms today.
Other budget items for the communications department include $37,000 for hardware replacement for NPTV, and an $8,500 contract to ensure the district websites all meet federal accessibility standards, Gillmer said. Liberaski added that the department has continued efforts to reduce costs and add revenues, by holding certain celebrations in house, reducing printed materials, and using the district Educational Foundation, which Liberaski heads and is able to fundraise as a nonprofit, to fund projects across the district. The NPTV studio will be funded with $40,000 from the foundation, which hired two staff members over the past year to fully focus on fundraising and funding projects across the district.
“We’ve been really happy to add those positions without burdening the school district,” Liberaski said.
Gillmer said the new NPTV set will be the first all-new one the station has ever had, since prior studio sets were made of donated materials.
“The original sets, I actually built in 1994. Structurally, I wouldn’t stand on them, or try to push on them too hard, but that all came out when we had to do the HVAC in 2012,” he said.
“All of that was ripped out, and a little part of my heart was ripped out too, because that stuff was gone, and we haven’t had a set instudio” since then, he said.
Over the past year, NPTV students have successfully shifted to broadcasts from home via stream, he added, but having a fully modern set will better prepare students for broadcast careers.
“We use all elements. It’s no longer just a video, or just graphics. If you watch any news program, it’s all about where you are in the studio, setting up your camera shots and how you move, to show people in different areas, and use your monitors, to show the story and tell part of that story,” he said.
“It’s one of those skill sets that we want to develop with our students, to know how to just not write a story and cut video, because that’s really a 1980s, 1990s skill — it’s an important one, and it’s still the core of what everything is — but how shows are put together, and there’s so much movement and motion in a studio,” he said.
Board member Jonathan Kassa said he would miss seeing NPTV trophies for various awards on display during their broadcast and Gillmer said “those are not going anywhere.” Liberaski added that the new NPTV set will take advantage of certain educational tax credits, “so this does not take away from any of the grants we typically support in our schools.”
And on one other program funded by the education foundation: Liberaski said since the start of the pandemic, nearly $50,000 has been raised to provide internet connections for students who do not have online access at home, and a project not funded in 2021-22 is a feasibility study to evaluate the community’s capacity to donate to a large fundraiser, possibly related to renovating the high school and/or adding a ninth grade center there.
“Maybe when we get to that point, we can revisit it,” she said.