Novato school marketing plan makes sense

The Novato Unified School District’s plans to spend $32,000 on a marketing plan aimed at attracting and retaining students is a modest measure.

The district is losing enrollment. Those losses mean the district faces serious financial, short- and long-term planning and staffing decisions.

The sum is a fraction of what the district is losing in state funding. By hiring a marketing firm, the district will launch a short-term online and print ad and video aimed at parents who are deciding in spring which schools to enroll their children in for the fall.

In fact, Superintendent Kris Cosca estimates the cost of the contract could be covered by enrolling only three additional students.

We hope the effort has greater success. The district is facing the challenges of declining enrollment. Its 2020-21 enrollment — just over 7,000 — is about 400 fewer students — equivalent to as many as 20 classrooms — than the district had in 2017-18.

That’s why the district has started the process of looking at possibly closing one of its elementary school campuses.

The decision to spend money on marketing isn’t sitting well with some parents, who would rather the district focus its money and attention on reopening its high school campuses, which have been offlimits for months due to public health precautions driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Novato has been the scene of parent demonstrations demanding a reopening of campuses, which has just begun.

Marketing themselves is not new for public schools. They promote kindergarten registration and, in the past, many high schools have taken out ads showing how their students have done in winning acceptance to college programs. Historically, the most effective strategies are wordof-mouth and providing quality schooling that meets the community’s demands.

School districts should have a handle on why parents decide to send their children to private schools, charter schools or opt to transfer to other public schools.

Over these challenging months, some parents have likely moved their children to schools that are providing oncampus learning rather than waiting for Novato to bring students back to its brick-andmortar classrooms.

District leadership needs to have a firm handle on why local public schools are losing enrollment. It could amount to a normal rise and decline in the number of youngsters living in town.

A traditional explanation around here is that many parents opt for faith-based private schools.

But if there are other reasons — academic offerings, the quality of teachers, a desire for more (or less) structure, campus environments or extracurricular activities — district leaders need to address those if they want to compete and stem the loss of students to other schools.

Parents who have been demanding the reopening of Novato’s high schools are understandably frustrated. Likely, so are district officials. But they have to have strong confidence that precautions are in place to make sure students and staff are safe.

A downturn in the trend of COVID-19 cases and a steady increase in the number of people vaccinated does not mean there is no longer a grave threat, not only to those who would share campuses, but the families that students and staff return home to as well as the stores and services they patronize.

Getting all educators vaccinated will be a step toward even safer campuses and a possible return to fully reopening classrooms.

District leaders know there is pressure to fully restore oncampus learning. But they also know they bear the pressure of the responsibility for the safety of students and staff.

That is a challenging and changing balance — and promises to be for months to come.

District leaders are right. The marketing campaign is a modest investment. Unfortunately it is a simplistic target for critics of the district’s finances and re-opening plans.