In an effort to reverse its ebbing enrollment, the St. Paul School District will launch a marketing campaign this summer aimed at promoting a positive image that would attract students back to city schools.
"We want to better tell our stories and not rely on the media to do that," said Suzanne Kelly, the district's chief of staff. "We're not just selling ourselves, we're telling the community what we have to offer that the media won't tell because it's not sexy or sensational."
The district will pay for the marketing effort with $225,000 it has received from several local private organizations.
In the past two decades, Minnesota legislators have created a scramble for students and the tax dollars that pay for their educations when they began funding charter schools and allowed students to transfer out of poorly performing districts. While enrollment in St. Paul has dwindled, enrollment in surrounding suburban districts has continued to climb.
Since then, many public school districts have bought billboard space and television ads to promote their academic opportunities.
The St. Paul district began looking at ways to better market itself when student enrollment began dipping in 2000, Kelly said. Superintendent Valeria Silva set a goal this year of attracting up to 5,000 students by 2014. The district currently has about 38,000 students enrolled.
"There's good stuff that happens every day in our district," Kelly said. "I think people know that we provide a great education for students at some schools. We want people to know that that's happening across the district at different sites. Beneath the data, there are other stories to tell."
Exactly how the marketing campaign will look is still in the planning phase.
