| Welcome to the third issue of the electronic newsletter for staff and volunteers who are involved with school recruitment and marketing. The goal of this newsletter is to share practical ideas that can be implemented within your respective school communities. Hopefully the ideas and recommendations shared in this newsletter will help you attract families to your school community and enhance your school community.
TELEPHONE BOOKS
It was called to our attention that some school telephone numbers in the Yellow Pages are incorrect. You may want to double check your listing. If changes need to be made, contact the staff person who coordinates your listing.
OPEN HOUSE FOLLOW-UP
Even though Open House season has been completed for several months, there are two key parts of follow-up that can be beneficial to your recruitment efforts:
-- Have you contacted families who visited, but have not yet registered? These families may have not made a decision and another contact from you may be helpful.
-- Compare the number of families who visited Open House to the number of families who registered? If you find that a high percentage of families who visited the Open House did indeed register, you can grade your Open House a "success." If the percentage is not that high, you may need to address the details of your Open House and determine if changes need to be made. You may want to follow up with families choosing another school and find out what impacted their decision.
SPRING EVENTS
Many schools host a wide variety of spring events – spring concert, kindergarten graduation, eighth grade graduation. You may want to consider inviting prospective families to these special events. Be sure that your parish community is invited to these events as well, since our schools are ministries of our parishes. Remember to distribute this information to local media outlets and to post it to the archdiocesan web site (www.archmil.org) using the Extranet.
INFORMATION IN YOUR PARISH BULLETIN
Does your parish bulletin contain school information on a weekly basis? If not, visit with the parish secretary or bulletin editor to learn how this information can be included.
The information should be more than an event listing. Details can be about student or staff accomplishments, special events, sacramental preparation, or anything that is happening in the school. Notes can be pulled from your weekly school newsletter so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
It’s important to keep your parish community informed about all of the wonderful things that are happening within the school community.
MIDDLE SCHOOL NAMES
Each year, archdiocesan staff members ask our elementary school personnel to enter names and addresses of fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. This data is used by our Catholic high school staff members in recruitment efforts. Staff members at our 13 Catholic secondary schools rely on this important information to communicate with these students and their parents as they begin to make decisions about high school selection. The ability to send information to the students and parents is vital to the recruitment efforts of our high schools.
After the names have been entered into the Extranet, the project becomes one of maintenance. Each year you will only have to enter the names of next year's fifth graders and any new middle school students, and make mailing address changes.
If you have any questions about the technical aspect of entering names into the Extranet, please contact Mark Barthel (barthelm@archmil.org, (414-769-3454) in our Information Systems Office.
Please contact Kathleen Hohl (hohlk@archmil.org, 414-769-3494) if you would like to discuss the importance of entering the names of your middle school students into our system.
HERE COMES SUMMER!
Summer may be a perfect time to engage in long-range planning for your school community. Involving staff and parents in a half-day or full-day planning session may help you address some back-burner issues that you never seem to get to during the school year. During the summer, there may be fewer schedule conflicts for key school leaders.
WHAT'S WORKED?
If you have attracted new families to your school using a creative recruitment tool, we'd love to hear from you. We'd also like to hear from you if your school has received media attention in your local community. Send your accomplishments to hohlk@archmil.org.
Have a terrific summer!
Kathleen Hohl, Communication Coordinator
hohlk@archmil.org
(414) 769-3494
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