About NSPRA
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The Superintendents to Watch award recognizes up to 25 school district leaders each year who have fewer than five years of experience as a superintendent and who demonstrate dynamic, fast-paced leadership with strong communication at its core.
What does leadership mean to you? Leadership is working with trusted partners to build a framework for progress and accountability. I feel fortunate that our Board of Trustees, staff, families and community partners wholeheartedly support our strategic goals by showing up each day to provide the education and experiences our students deserve. I believe that the core of leadership is commitment.
How have you integrated communication into your district’s strategic plan? Beyond simply making robust communication, community engagement and advocacy a goal within the NVUSD’s five-year strategic plan, we ensure that expectations, progress and successes are communicated regularly with stakeholders. Our leadership does this through an approach that scaffolds information so all stakeholders are informed, in a sequence most beneficial to the organization. We share an update on progress made toward our six strategic goals with the NVUSD Board of Education each week. Then a bi-weekly All-Divisions newsletter is sent to faculty, staff and community advocates, and a Family newsletter is sent to our families. This ensures that our entire community is kept informed. Finally, there are a handful of times when the strategic plan and progress are shared publicly, typically during Board meetings, management/leadership meetings and at NVUSD’s annual “State of the District” event. The website is also regularly updated to help supplement these communication vehicles.
What communication initiative are you most proud of that have you implemented in your district? NVUSD is fortunate to have so many staff, families, board and community partners who care about advancing education for our children with a focus on equity and excellence. NVUSD’s ability over the last five years to increase community engagement—to truly hear and learn from our community—makes me feel incredibly proud. We have taken what we learned and developed a defined, consistent internal and external communications framework. This has ensured that not only is the messaging NVUSD wants to be communicated shared, but that we also have a framework in place to collect information and feedback from our stakeholders. This has resulted in robust listening-and-learning sessions, ongoing meetings with parents through a Coffee with the Superintendent series, expanded multilingual interpretation/translation services and so much more. Increased community engagement across our diverse demographics has enriched our school community and, thus, our students' learning.
B.A. - Mississippi State University; MPA - University of Georgia
I believe school PR/communications is what I was born to do! One of the biggest decisions a parent can make is where to send their child to school, and it’s an honor to share with our parents the engaging work that their children are doing under the guidance of world-class teachers and leaders. On any given day, in any given school, there are many stories to be told and I take that charge seriously. As school communicators played a key role in COVID-19 communications, storytelling was more important than ever – not only did I share information with parents about our protocols, but I also made over 80 visits to schools last year and told a variety of stories about how students were thriving with both in-person and distance learning options. I also worked with principals to determine best mitigation practices and helped make those pervasive, because positive action must be the foundation of what we are ultimately communicating. School public relations is incredibly complex and I love that each day brings a new challenge.
My greatest school PR success was completing 11 nationally-innovative school communication audits using a process of research, planning, implementation, and evaluation. I am now in phase two of this project and am attending school council meetings to garner feedback from parents about school-level communication and how I can better support the work of their schools. One of the most significant findings is that as students take more ownership of their learning, they also take more ownership in parent communication. Therefore, next steps are to better prepare parents for this transition and to also determine best practices from exemplar teachers and coaches at the secondary level so we can strike the right balance with parents feeling informed and fostering student independence.
My greatest school PR challenge is overcoming rigidity. Like many PR professionals, I am detail-oriented and a self-described perfectionist. It’s a blessing and a curse to see when something is one pixel off, but the greatest challenge I have faced in my 13 years in this field is to learn to be more flexible. I might have an aversion to Comic Sans or Curlz, but it’s not the end of the world if those are a font favorite elsewhere. What’s more important is the bigger picture – staff and parents feeling well-informed and students growing and learning in positive school cultures. Instead of telling someone their website isn’t formatted properly, I now make a 2-3 minute screencast if I think there’s a quick tutorial I can offer to provide ongoing professional learning. By being much more flexible, I have deepened relationships and become better at supporting the most important job that occurs in our school system: teaching.
My favorite part of my job is the relationships. I often say that there is no substitute for showing up, and that’s why I make so many school visits each year. From getting to hold a gorgeous monarch butterfly to watching a vibrant student musical to seeing 3-D printing in action from engineering students, I have witnessed countless unique opportunities, and these experiences are just a small piece of what our students get to take part in each and every day. If I didn’t take the time to form relationships, I wouldn’t know that what students value is knowing that the photos I take may show up in their yearbooks. I wouldn’t know the myriad of annual activities that teachers do across our schools because I wouldn’t have witnessed them firsthand. I wouldn’t know about the families of our principals or what they believe makes their school unique. All of that is invaluable because at the end of the day and at the end of this career, relationships are what will remain – both professionally and personally.
The communication tool I use the most is Canva! I would be a brand ambassador if they asked! I am not very mathematically-minded and it can be challenging for someone with an eye for good design – but not an eye for rulers and gridlines – to be a graphic designer. However, Canva has made it possible and I am able to create aesthetically-pleasing graphics with short turn-around times. I have trained communication ambassadors at our schools how to use it as well. Right after Canva, the tool I most use is iMovie. I am completely self-taught in videography and using iMovie and Canva together has made me someone who can add “videographer” to their list of expertise.