More than half of families (54.1%) don't enroll in their zoned public school — school choice is no longer a fringe behavior, it's the majority experience. In this session, we unpack new SchoolCEO research surveying 1,016 parents across three transition points (Pre-K→K, Elementary→Middle, Middle→High) to reveal what actually drives enrollment decisions — and the four words (safe, welcoming, responsive, trusted) that top the list at every stage, while "rigorous" barely registers.

Then we turn the data into a plan. Districts aren't running one enrollment campaign — they're running three: adults choose kindergarten, families negotiate middle school, and students drive the decision to attend high school. Materials built for one persona are background noise to the other two. Walk away with both the research and a practical action plan for building three distinct marketing ecosystems, auditing your current materials for gaps, and fixing the leaks costing you families at both enrollment and retention.

Webinar Transcript

Brittany Keil: So, good morning, everybody! If we haven't met, my name is Brittany Edwardes Keil, and I'm the Senior Manager for Research and Media for Apptegy. I produce SchoolCEO Magazine, I work with the incredible team to create everything around thought leadership and research, and I'm a former educator and a public school superfan, if you can't tell.

Greg Turchetta: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Greg Turchetta, Strategic Communications Advisor here at Apptegy. If we haven't met, I look forward to meeting you. I am currently on tour with the presentation.

Brittany produced this research, I'm currently on tour with it, was in Utah yesterday and Louisiana today, excited to join you today and talk about this. I think, Brittany, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's the most impactful thing we've produced yet.

Brittany Keil: I absolutely, absolutely agree. There are also two special things about this presentation today.

Greg Turchetta: Oh.

Brittany Keil: This is the first time we have presented virtually to everybody an open invitation, so you'll get to see this for the very first time, other than on a stage. And then second, I believe this is our very first webinar ever broadcast from a McDonald's. Is that correct, Greg?

Greg Turchetta: Live from New Orleans, baby.

Brittany Keil: Alright, so let's go ahead and get started. We're going to be digging into our newest research here today, but we're also going to be talking a lot about enrollment. As you can probably tell, Greg and I like to be fluid, we like to be casual, so if you've got questions, feel free to put them in the chat.

Brittany Keil: We'll hopefully have a little bit of time at the end, but if we don't, we are happy to get back to you.

Brittany Keil: -Oh, sorry.

Brittany Keil: So the truth is that families used to just show up.

Greg Turchetta: And they shut up, and they just did what they did.

Brittany Keil: Now, they shop, and every single school in town has to make a pitch.

Brittany Keil: What we mean by this is that for the longest time, families chose the school that was nearest to their house, it wasn't even a choice, it was just the expected behavior. It was a lot like somebody saying, like, hey, what post office do you go to? You go to the one closest to your house, and this was true of schools, too. This is no longer the case.

Greg Turchetta: This requires a mentality shift. I've got a lot of comms people on this call today. This is a building-level problem we're going to dive much deeper into, but your schools have got to be understanding they're competing.

Brittany Keil: So, when we set out to this research, to do this research, I'll be honest, seeing the realities of school choice wasn't even, on my expected docket. However, I want to start with one of the biggest oomph statistics, because this is the one I think that you need to take and begin that mind shift that Greg was just talking about.

Brittany Keil: the school choice is no longer a fringe behavior. It's not something that families, we've got some audio going on.

Brittany Keil: Just checking, is anyone else having audio issues?

Brittany Keil: Okay.

Brittany Keil: Alright, looks like we're good, Philip, I'm sorry.

Brittany Keil: Alright, so…

Greg Turchetta: carry on.

Brittany Keil: Yeah, to get back to it, school choice is no longer something that just some families do. This is a majority behavior that we saw among the panel, or the panel surveyed in our most recent study.

Brittany Keil: 54%, more than half of families choose something other than their zone public school. This doesn't mean that, that they go necessarily to a school that's a charter school or a private school, but rather they are not selecting the zoned public school closest to their house.

Greg Turchetta: Which leads you to this, conclusion that is 2026 an enrollment marketing mindset, which is.

Greg Turchetta: Superintendents and even school board members have said to me, are you saying we have to compete with ourselves? Like, our schools need to compete with each other? And the answer is yes. The word isn't compete, but it is, each school has to make the argument, why us?

Because they're not just choosing you anymore.

Brittany Keil: When Greg and I say that this, this concept, this idea that school choice is a majority behavior requires a mind shift, what we're saying is this. We're saying is that, that you can no longer think of this as something that some families do.

Brittany Keil: but rather something that you should expect most of your families are going to exhibit in some way. This may look like something like buying a house in a different district, or just a different neighborhood. This may look like using somebody else's address, or this may just be using something like a charter school, or sorry, excuse me, a magnet school within the district.

Brittany Keil: Fewer than half of the families stay put. So 46% did choose their local zone public school, and we're gonna dig really deep into these numbers, and also the big caveat of, what all of these families have in common. 23 picked a different public school, and 31% went to their charter, private, or homeschool, or virtual.

Greg Turchetta: And this means every school now, it's an imperative, has to sell its why. When I say why us, that's what I mean. On its website, in its communications, in every conversation with parents, say it out loud, say it on purpose, be deliberate about it. I like to say your principals are your chief marketing officers.

You're gonna see in this research exactly why.

Brittany Keil: So, I mentioned that this 54% number came with a caveat, and the caveat is this. These are families who are fresh off the decision of a major school transition.

Brittany Keil: We set out in this study to, understand how families made decisions, specifically at, we viewed, three major, educational transitions. And this is pre-K to kindergarten, elementary to middle, and middle to high school.

Brittany Keil: We know that not every school district follows those buckets exactly, but we think this is the majority experience of most families. So what we did is we asked over a thousand families who had, within the last year, navigated one of these three transitions.

Brittany Keil: Exactly about their enrollment decision making. How did they choose the choice that they eventually landed on, and what led them to that choice? What influenced their decision? These are critical things for school leaders, school communicators, and anybody who works in recruitment to know, because you need to understand first, and we're going to dig deep into this.

Brittany Keil: That you are not strategizing around one major enrollment journey, but rather three separate funnels.

Greg Turchetta: And one other thing I've been asked on the road with this is, no, these were not all Apptegy clients. This is a cross-section of parents from across the board, across the country.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely.

Brittany Keil: I also want to point out that our, survey was pretty representative among the three spread. We're going to dig into each of these through into three transitions. All of them are fascinating, all of them are absolutely unique, but we had a good representation from each of these three.

Brittany Keil: So, kindergarten, middle school, and high school.

Brittany Keil: These are the three doors that schools… or that families enter or decide to leave your district most often. And unfortunately, schools lose a little bit more ground at every single door.

Greg Turchetta: Lissa just weighed in that our… their district, Conroe, has just added a family communications coordinator, so she sees the huge connection between that responsibility and the greater focus on customer service. You're absolutely right, Lucy, because here comes the problem, right? I'm finding one.

Greg Turchetta: The longer families stay with us, the more we leak

Greg Turchetta: There's the three transitions, right? Pre-K to kindergarten, elementary to middle, middle to high. Here's the part that blew my mind.

Greg Turchetta: How is it when the customer gets to know you and their product more? They later decide, I don't like it anymore.

Greg Turchetta: You can see alternatives chosens climb, detractors climb, staff responsiveness slips, and that's a precursor to something else.

Greg Turchetta: But, Brittany, I mean, to me, it's…

Greg Turchetta: We spend so much time on kindergarten, but we don't on the middle school and high school transitions. Is that what jumped out to you in this research?

Brittany Keil: Absolutely, and I will say, like, so when I think about this leak, again, this is concerning through the comment that Greg just mentioned. The folks who know you best are making choices to go elsewhere. However, I also think we're losing opportunities at each of these funnels.

Brittany Keil: And we're gonna dig into, each of the three, because honestly, what moves the needle in kindergarten doesn't even matter to a high school family.

Brittany Keil: So first, we're gonna go through, our five major findings. The first is that 54%, and the second is this. And this is exciting. There's some good things here, and there's also some, challenges associated, and Greg's gonna dig into this.

63% of families researched your school on your school website.

Brittany Keil: This is incredible. This is great for all of you who put the time and the effort into your school websites when it comes to recruitment. That is fantastic, because families are coming here.

Brittany Keil: I know across the private sector, there are many, many markets where, where marketers would get anything to have folks actually come to their website to research their product, rather than go somewhere like online reviews, Facebook, social media, all kinds of other places they can find information. You are lucky as school communicators, because by and large, families are coming directly to you to understand your school.

Brittany Keil: But there's a caveat.

Greg Turchetta: You mean bad news?

Greg Turchetta: Bad news is only 1 in 4 said your website actually influenced their decision.

Greg Turchetta: And I can tell you why.

Greg Turchetta: I do homepage critiques for free, by the way, for Apptegy clients or anybody else. If you want one, you're gonna get one today either way. The problem is, your homepage is designed for current families and not prospective families. If I go down your homepage and I see all this information about lunch menus, and events, and the newsfeed is just full of things that are going on, and

Greg Turchetta: this staff member won this award. Where are you making an argument to prospective families?

Greg Turchetta: And we're gonna dive much deeper into that, but this is the first warning sign to that, is we've built it wrong. And if you've heard me present ever before, you're gonna hear me say this again. We spend 80% of our communication time telling families how to do school, and less than 20% telling them why they should choose this school. And that's what this stat's pointing to.

Brittany Keil: are…

Brittany Keil: So, this is a challenge, because everyone's visiting, but almost no one is convinced. And I think the phrase that we're going to return to in a later, a later thing is unconvinced.

Brittany Keil: So you can see, here I have a chart that shows which channels families use to research, school districts, and then what actually made them change their mind, or make their decision.

Brittany Keil: The school website is the one with the biggest drop, so folks are going there to research, but they're not actually changing their minds. However, we've got some really interesting stuff in the middle, and we're gonna dig deep into this today. Families were similarly, you know, used to research and influence the decision when it came to school events or visits.

Brittany Keil: And word of mouth from another parent.

Brittany Keil: This drop, though, the research to influence conversion in the websites is something that I think school leaders and school communicators can absolutely take action on.

Greg Turchetta: There's actually a comment in the chat, Brittany, I want to stop for, because Kari's from the webmaster from Klein, and Klein is one of my top 5 in the country when it comes to enrollment focus, and Kari just said they're actually redoing the front page now to be even more towards prospective families, which I can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

Greg Turchetta: When we get deeper into this, I'll tell…

Brittany Keil: Hey, some other.

Greg Turchetta: ones you need to look at, yeah?

Brittany Keil: Our third finding is this, and I mentioned this in my intro, and if you know you, me, you've heard me say this before, but I was a high school teacher for 10 years, and this did not surprise me one bit. However, I do think that this means a lot of, interesting perspective shift for school marketers and school communicators and school leaders in general.

Brittany Keil: By high school, the student themselves are your customer.

Brittany Keil: So, this is what we found. We asked families what was the biggest influence on their decision-making when it came to deciding where they go, and for that final funnel, for that middle school to high school choice, the students' opinion themselves was the most important influence.

Brittany Keil: And I think that this has a really big impact for how we talk to those families who are making that high school decision. First, your freshman is not reading your enrollment brochure.

Brittany Keil: It is probably not written for them, it is probably not catering to what matters to them, and they are simply not interested in what you have to say if you are not talking directly to them and speaking to the values that they have.

Brittany Keil: This… families are following their child's decision. They are looking for their child's acceptance of a school placement, and also their child's excitement at knowing that they are in a place where they can thrive.

Brittany Keil: You have to market to the kids, not only that are in your schools, but also to the 14-year-olds, who are in your schools now, and show them that this can continue to be somewhere that they grow and thrive.

Greg Turchetta: Let's talk about that for a second. How many of you actually have a high school marketing plan?

Greg Turchetta: I mean, we have open houses, we have programs that we're marketing, but overall, are we really marketing our high schools and marketing them in a way like TikTok would show up? Because that's what Fortune 500 companies are doing, right? Fortune 500 companies know that 14-year-olds make decisions, especially when it comes to buying, on social media.

Greg Turchetta: I know in many states, you can't even use TikTok, so I'm just using that example as the short burst of videos, the, what I need to see.

Greg Turchetta: That's gonna be a mindset shift for your… especially for your building leaders, that they're talking to the 8th graders, not the parents.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely, and I will say, 8th graders, you're not talking to juniors and seniors who are already, you know, in some ways are, like, mini-adult. You're talking to 8th graders who are very much looking into high school as a place where they can become the adult that they want to be.

Brittany Keil: Greg, do you want to walk us through the pool and push here?

Greg Turchetta: Yes, this is one of my favorite parts of this, because, I mean, we're gonna get candid for a minute, okay?

Greg Turchetta: if you have charter schools in your district, you know that there's a paradigm shift or a conundrum that happens through the grade levels. In elementary school, you're good, right? Maybe 4th or 5th grade, they start sniffing around the charter schools, or might go home school, but by middle school, they're gone.

Greg Turchetta: And they're gone because they're worried about bullying, they're worried about safety. And I'm around the country now talking about this, and I challenge the room and go, please tell me I'm wrong about middle schools. And no one argues that point. How are we okay with that?

Because then what happens is, in high school, many times they come back to us because we have better academics, extracurriculars, and athletics.

Greg Turchetta: And we just kind of live with that. We can't live with that anymore. In the 2026 enrollment Playbook we're going to give you later, you're going to see you really can't live with it. But you have to understand there's a pull and a push, and you've got to figure out which one you can actually

Greg Turchetta: fix from your chair. So the pull is, you can market people to, we've got robotics, we've got arts, we've got sports, your friends go here. You can win them with marketing on those specific points. The push is the things you can't fix, but your district can, and your schools need to fix.

Greg Turchetta: I need to get out of here. This doesn't feel safe. I don't feel like I'm known. I feel like I'm a number, not a name, right?

That might be because the high school's big, or it's not. I tell this story, when I was the comms chief, I moved my oldest daughter 3 out of 4 years of high school to 3 different high schools, because if it wasn't right.

Greg Turchetta: That was a push. The push that needed to be fixed, and I moved. Parents are moving on that. But no campaign fixes the push problems.

No campaign fixes the field.

Greg Turchetta: A better experience fixes that.

Brittany Keil: And you can see a comment here from our open responses. My child gave us the okay that he wanted to go to a school, and we agreed. Families are very aware that their child not only needs to be, you know, challenged and all kinds of things, but also needs to feel happy, safe, and included. And they're following their lead when it comes to high school.

Brittany Keil: Our fourth finding is this, and, you know, you're gonna hear us talk a lot about how you actually have three separate marketing funnels, but something that's really strong and really hopeful here is that, all of the families, regardless of the funnel that they were in.

Brittany Keil: had the same decision, or the same words when asked the question, which words best describe what made you feel confident in your chosen education setting? I'm going to say that question again because I think it helps you understand these words better than anything else. Which words best describe what made you feel confident in your chosen education setting?

Brittany Keil: As I said, so much changes between the transitions, but these words did not change.

Brittany Keil: These are.

Greg Turchetta: That word didn't come out.

Brittany Keil: fruit.

Brittany Keil: Sorry?

Greg Turchetta: Sorry, Brittany, go. I was gonna say…

Brittany Keil: These are your four-word marketing campaign. Safe, welcoming, responsive, and trusted.

Brittany Keil: I think this is.

Greg Turchetta: The word that didn't come up.

Greg Turchetta: You gotta show it to him real quick, and then we'll come back to it, okay?

Brittany Keil: Alright, the word that didn't come up.

Greg Turchetta: Rigorous! Are you kidding me? You've built everything you have around rigor. Your academic department wants to tout it.

We put out the state releases when the report card comes out.

Greg Turchetta: It's not the deciding factor. Okay, can we go back to it, Bernie?

Brittany Keil: Absolutely. So, this is what matters to families. This is your marketing plan in a nutshell. You can walk away with this right now.

And I think you can also ask yourself the question, how… anytime you're communicating, how am I communicating that my district is safe, that my schools are welcoming, that my schools are responsive, and that my schools can be trusted?

Brittany Keil: Again, rigor did not show up. However, I think that this gives you exactly what families are looking for, and we have some ideas of why things like rigor matter less to families.

Greg Turchetta: Yeah, I mean, listen, it's… academic quality has become the baseline, it's no longer the measure, right? If all your… if I'm… I'm looking between 3 to 5 different A-rated schools, rigor's baked in.

Greg Turchetta: But if you go back to the words.

Greg Turchetta: you got some problems when it comes to welcoming and responsive, right? And here's the problem. The biggest problem with responsive and welcoming is the corporate world, again, has created a right-now mentality with parents. They can get whatever they want right now.

I have a question with my bank, I can get an answer Tuesday at midnight. If Amazon's making a delivery, I know when they're 8 houses away.

Greg Turchetta: If, I just got off a plane a half hour ago, I was getting text alerts where my bag was. It was on the plane, it was off the plane, it's at the baggage claim.

Greg Turchetta: Where does that work in the K-12 space?

Greg Turchetta: I asked this question, we have another customer service presentation we do, and I asked this question.

Greg Turchetta: If I'm a parent, where do you want me to ask the question, so that you can be welcoming and responsive?

Greg Turchetta: I know if I go to the teacher, but is it email? Is it phone? What does that even look like? Those are the systems that I think, overall, we struggle with to keep us from being welcoming, responsive, and trusted.

One more point on welcoming.

Greg Turchetta: When Brittany said that word, every one of you thought of one of your schools and a front office person who may not have the best personality.

Greg Turchetta: who may be the person you're like, I don't know if that person really should be talking to parents, because if this is true, we've got a problem. We do. And I told a room full of superintendents yesterday, you need to move that person.

Greg Turchetta: If I walk into your front office and there's not a badge that says Director of First Impression, that's not the right person.

Greg Turchetta: Right? This is a huge finding that we've seen come back over and over again with customer service.

Brittany Keil: I think, too, and we're going to be talking through some of the challenges, that of what we found in this research, but there is a lot here that communications can own.

Brittany Keil: Welcoming. Think about your digital spaces. Responsive, think about the systems you have underneath that help get information from one person to another so that you can actually respond to families. And of course, everything we're doing is building towards, communicating safety and trust.

Brittany Keil: So, again, this is something that you can, you know, weave every single message you have into, how you're answering these questions. Safe, welcoming, responsive, trusted. This is the new, like, SWRT. This is what you should communicate over and over again, no matter the campaign.

Brittany Keil: Our fifth finding is this, and this shouldn't be surprising, but this should be something that you strategize around. Families want to hear from people. So you saw how few families are actually convinced by your online, you know, website strategy. However, when it came to actually talking to other families or other people who have experiences with your district.

Brittany Keil: The name, the name of the game totally changed.

Brittany Keil: Tours and parents beat ads every single time.

Brittany Keil: Families described a school tour as the moment they, most… sorry, whoa, let me get my words together. Families most often described a school visitor tour as the place where they felt confident about their decision. Similar, a recommendation from another parent did the same thing.

Brittany Keil: Why is this? Because this is where families feel like they can get an unvarnished, unedited, truthful depiction of what it's like to be in your district.

Brittany Keil: This slide could really be broken down into two conversations, into what works, and then what's challenging for schools.

Brittany Keil: Because on the other hand, we have districts advertising or marketing, and there's some pushback here. Like, maybe districts don't run ads. Maybe districts don't run ads strategically. But, if you are a school communicator who's so concerned about how the news is treating your district.

Brittany Keil: The honest truth is parents say it doesn't. And I will say that the science of, you know, the science of…

Brittany Keil: Influence is challenging. It can be hard even for you to know what is actually influencing you, but this can be a very clear, you know, guiding principle on how you can spend your time.

Greg Turchetta: Houston, we have a problem, and it's tours.

Greg Turchetta: This is… I know when it started, it started with COVID. We were probably doing some robust tours pre-COVID. COVID came, we shut everything down, and we've been slow to reopen since.

Greg Turchetta: If you take anything else from this presentation today, you need to go back to your office and talk to your superintendent and your principal supervisor and say, do we have a district-wide system to ensure quality of our tours?

Greg Turchetta: Do we even have consistency in our tours? Or is it just a principle-by-principle? In certain buildings you get a great tour, in certain buildings you may not get a tour at all?

Greg Turchetta: That's a problem.

Greg Turchetta: Right? I like to tell people, I can walk into your lobby, and in 6 seconds, tell you whether you have an enrollment problem or a teacher shortage.

Greg Turchetta: Goes back to that welcoming and responsive piece, but also shows up on the tours.

Greg Turchetta: Is the face you're putting out is making a parent decide not whether you're worthy, whether you want me. Are you making an argument? I was at a charter school marketing conference three weeks ago in Dallas. I was kind of… I tripped across, I didn't really realize it was for charter schools, but here I am in the room.

So, like, I was in the away locker room getting the playbook.

Greg Turchetta: But when you hear what charter schools are doing.

Greg Turchetta: and they dive into this, is they're all about the tour, they call back the same day, they give a name to the person, they're all over it. That's your competition.

Greg Turchetta: How are we showing up?

Brittany Keil: I think there's a lot of really shining examples of what… how tours can work well. Think about college tours, think about the swag, think about the follow-up, think about the sense of personalization. And then think about where that gap exists in your own district.

Brittany Keil: So nothing you buy will outperform the tour. And thankfully, tours are not expensive. They're not something that you have to buy. There's no special equipment needed.

All you need is a system and intentionality. We have a couple of recommendations from this. First, you should absolutely have one-click tour, signing up. And the reason for this, I can give a very personal example.

So my family moved from Arkansas to the Seattle area last year.

Brittany Keil: I was in town for about a week to chore about 33 rental houses and about 7 elementary schools. It was a very, it was a very difficult mark… The rental market in Seattle is crazy, and I was, like, number 6 on some of the lists, even though I had, you know, put in… or, like, put my application in within the first 20 minutes. It was up, it was crazy.

Brittany Keil: But, all that to say, I emailed some schools, asking for tours. Very few of them actually had places I could sign up for a tour. Actually, none of them.

Brittany Keil: Some of the elementary schools got back to me immediately with a tour date. Others did not. Then when I called, I got some of the same response, and some schools actually have yet to get back to me. A year and a half later, I've accepted.

It's just not gonna happen.

Brittany Keil: go on my list, they went off, because I was a busy pre… I was a busy parent, I almost said busy pregnant, I was also pregnant. Busy pregnant parent, making my way to Seattle, doing a lot of things at once, and I wanted to make the right decision fast.

Brittany Keil: Then, when it comes to the actual experience of the tour, there's so much that can happen here, too. So, there's actually a couple districts in Minnesota, and I'm happy to share this resource, who did a secret shopping experience with other communications directors. So, imagine this, you know some other communications directors at other schools or other superintendents.

Brittany Keil: You enlist them to try and enroll in your district as if they were a parent, and give them a lot of problems to navigate through. Maybe their child has special needs, maybe their child wants to talk to a coach, maybe their child wants to know what kind of robotics problems you have.

Brittany Keil: Call the front office and see how long it takes to get a response and get follow-through.

Brittany Keil: What the communications directors found is that things slip through the cracks when it comes to phone calls. We know our front desk people are super busy, but I also think that a lot of districts lack the infrastructure, the intranet, to get questions answered behind the scene.

Brittany Keil: If the front desk gets a question that they don't know the answer to, how do they get an answer elsewhere within an hour? Because these are the kind of timelines that families are working with.

Brittany Keil: Then, when you actually have the door, what is happening? Is it personalized to the student and the family? Do they actually go into the classrooms, or do they just walk into the halls?

Brittany Keil: Some of the secret shoppers mentioned that the principal would march them through the halls, take a peep into the auditorium, and walk them out. They never got to see teaching and learning, they never got to see any of the adults who make the classrooms in the experience shine, and this led them to be less convinced than in tours where these things did happen.

Greg Turchetta: Let me give you one other idea. How about student-led tours? I did a case study with a district in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Abby's on the call, she knows Jason, she's helping them out right now.

But Oskaloosa had 3 years of declining enrollment, and they decided to do student-led tours. If you go to their website, either by text message or email, you can get a tour with 20 minutes notice.

Greg Turchetta: And 20 minutes, a kid in a red blazer shows up at the front door to greet you. Now, there's still adults around, because I get questioned about that. Well, the 5th grader's doing it on their own, there's adults around. But how powerful is it to have a fifth grader show up and tell you what makes their school special?

Greg Turchetta: Right? That's a lot better than just walking the hall. I would… oh, wouldn't you know, in less than 3 years, their enrollment turned around.

Brittany Keil: Love it, absolutely. I also know Twin Peaks in Colorado, whenever a family signs up for a tour, they also ask the family to download their app, because they want families to understand how they communicate before they ever walk into the door. Y'all, the… I hate to say it, but the bar is on the ground! Like, there is so much you can do to make this special, to make this impactful.

And the hopeful, what happens out of this.

Brittany Keil: Is that you… people walk out of your tours and become advocates.

Brittany Keil: So now… findings, and we're.

Greg Turchetta: Oh, that's before you go on.

Brittany Keil: Oh, go ahead.

Greg Turchetta: Abby from Iowa just weighed in. Jason even has a phone dedicated to receive tour calls from the families at Oscaloosa. That's a commitment.

Brittany Keil: I love it. I like to imagine it's, like, a red phone, like the, you know, like…

Greg Turchetta: President.

Brittany Keil: Yeah, like, the frozen.

Greg Turchetta: that important.

Brittany Keil: actually.

Brittany Keil: So, now we want to turn research into action. So you've got 3 doors, 3 decision makers, and you've got 3 total campaigns that you can specialize and adopt to make, to make… to move the needle for your district.

Brittany Keil: So first, let's talk through the kindergarten transition, and honestly, oh, the ringer is on volume loud. Love it. Yeah, get those folks in the tour!

Brittany Keil: So when it comes to folks going into your kindergartens, you need to make the families feel wanted.

Brittany Keil: I'm gonna own it here. I navigated the kindergarten transition last year. Kindergarten families are terrified. Our little kids do not feel like they're ready for a school cafeteria.

And everything a school can do to show us that they are ready to support our children in their growth.

Brittany Keil: Through warmth, through welcoming, through safing, through safe, through nurturing, that is what's going to convince us.

Brittany Keil: So you can see that, the kindergarten transition is the only place where welcoming beats safe.

Brittany Keil: Families want

Brittany Keil: Welcoming beats safe. Families want to feel welcomed into your district, and they want their children to feel similar.

Brittany Keil: So what can you do for families? First of all, they weigh, this is the space where adults are making the most decisions with each other, which makes sense since the kids are, like, 5.

Brittany Keil: But they are looking for recommendations from parents and neighbors. They are talking to advocates. When I moved to Seattle, my daughter's kindergarten set us up with another parent in our class to talk us through the transition.

Brittany Keil: This was huge. She was the room mom, I'm sure they asked her permission beforehand, but when she, when I was given her contact and she texts me with a welcome, I had a thousand questions the school could have never had time to answer. But Jules did.

Brittany Keil: And Jewel's daughter became friends with my daughter from day one, because we actually got to meet for a playdate beforehand. This was in the middle of the school year. This was a weird time. Nobody moves to school in February, and yet they were ready to receive us and welcome us.

Second, you've got to invest in the tour.

Brittany Keil: And with the tour comes a named human. This is something private schools do so well. If someone has a question, do they know who to reach out to? Maybe this is your school principals, maybe this is your kindergarten teachers.

Honestly, I don't know any single human being better at welcoming, families than kindergarten teachers. They're incredible.

Brittany Keil: Second, or finally, you want to, figure out what your front office welcome looks like, so that welcoming is something that doesn't happen spur of the moment, but is operationalized. It is part of the thread of what it means to experience your school.

Greg Turchetta: You're gonna say, yeah, but Brittany, I don't oversee tours. Drifting a front office welcoming and putting the communication pieces in place for the tours? Absolutely a communications function, absolutely something you can own. In fact, you can own everything we're talking about today.

We're gonna give you a permission slip to do it later.

Brittany Keil: I love that, the permission slip. I also think you've got some of the cutest kids in kindergarten! Oh my gosh, operationalize them! If you need a, you know, a cute little voicemail for families, during breaks, like, have your, you know, 5th grade student president record that, because, oh my gosh, how cute.

Brittany Keil: So, things… things get a little tangled in middle school. Greg's not wrong. Middle school is rough, not just for the students and their families, but also for enrollment, too.

Brittany Keil: So things get a little bit complicated, but I don't want you to think that that means that middle school transition should be overlooked. Actually think that this is a space where school districts are severely, severely underutilizing and underworking with their families.

Brittany Keil: 6th graders deserve the kindergarten treatment.

Brittany Keil: And they need, and they deserve it earlier than the two weeks before school starts.

Brittany Keil: Things change when kids go to middle school. They no longer have a single homeroom teacher, often, who dictates most of their family's experience. They've got lots of classes, bigger schools, and families are usually not ready for that transition. What can you do when families are actually making those enrollment decisions in January, in February, in March, way ahead of the school year starting, to prepare families

Brittany Keil: For that change in experience.

Brittany Keil: This means that you need to understand what is changing, and how families actually experience this. Families are busy, they don't pay a lot of attention. Things you assume they know, they don't.

Brittany Keil: And so, what can you do to walk them through that experience with their 5th grader, so that 6th grade feels like, well, you know, still gonna be challenging, puberty is hard, something that they are ready for, and that they trust you to support them through.

Brittany Keil: It is notable here that the child's influence more than doubles. Families want their kids to go to school at places their kids like being.

Brittany Keil: Many of you have been in these shoes as your parents. When your kid dreads every single day of school, that is difficult for the entire family, and honestly, bad for the child's mental health. What can you do to help children feel safer at school, and so… and communicate this to families so that they feel more supported through this difficult transition?

Greg Turchetta: Got an idea.

Greg Turchetta: about publishing your bullying plan. I can't tell you how many times as a comms chief, when I worked in a district office, I got called down by the front desk because there was an irate parent there who wanted to talk to someone, and as you guys all know, comms is there, so you get called down, and the parent was talking about how their kid's being bullied, and then I finally got it out of the parent.

Greg Turchetta: This is the first time it's gone on, which means it's not bullying, because bullying's a repetitive act, and telling a parent that does not pull them off at all, by the way. But they need to know that, right? If you agree with my premise that middle school parents are concerned about bullying and safety, then you've got to take it head-on moving forward, otherwise you continue to bleed.

Greg Turchetta: So…

Greg Turchetta: You don't have to publish the bullying plan, but put a communications campaign together of all the interventions you have, the things you do behind the scenes to help kids. Safety. If you dump $20 million in safety into the building, say so. You don't need to say you put bulletproof glass in, we don't have to violate the safety plan.

Greg Turchetta: But a school is the safest place in a community now, next to a prison, and unfortunately, too often it looks like the prison when you walk in. Drab walls, a lot of glass, a vegetable I've got to talk to somebody through, doesn't feel welcoming.

Greg Turchetta: So, we've got to get… bring that down a bit, and explain to people what we're up to, why this is the best physical and mental choice for their child.

Brittany Keil: After middle school, we have the high school transition, and I've given you a little bit about this, so we're gonna move through this one quickly. So, 59% of families said that the child's own preference led to the decision of where they enroll their child.

Brittany Keil: This means that they're looking for spaces or spaces where their child can see themselves proud, can see themselves fitting in and making progress.

Brittany Keil: I think…

Brittany Keil: There's a lot of things that families can do here, but you need to market, first of all, to the 14-year-old.

Brittany Keil: Think about what draws 14-year-olds to your district or to your schools. If you don't know, ask them. Ask your 10th graders, your 11th graders, what makes them proud to go there? What is the highlight of their day of their school?

They will tell you, I promise, I taught high schoolers, and I always had this impression that kids hated going to school, but man, go to a homecoming prep rally, and you can see exactly how proud they are to be in your building.

Brittany Keil: Also, put real students on camera, and maybe even behind camera, too. I know that Spokane has done some really good work with us, so if you're looking for how to operationalize this, we have examples. But let them tell the other students what makes going to your high school something they love to do.

Greg Turchetta: Well, we can cruise through that one. You hit that one beautifully. All right, now…

Greg Turchetta: The website. Oh, the website.

Greg Turchetta: Homepage is the bane of my existence currently.

Greg Turchetta: Even as a company that provides the websites that many of you have, the website from a year or two years ago is no longer effective as it's set up, because it's set up for current families, right? And the details say to this to you. So let me tell you, somebody asked earlier, examples of great websites. I will give you 5 right now to look at, and then I'll tell you what they all have in common.

Greg Turchetta: Number one, Duval County, Florida. Number two, Socorro ISD in Texas. Already mentioned Klein ISD, Frisco ISD,

Greg Turchetta: Start there, Longview ISD in Texas, Coleman County, Alabama. Here's what they all have in common.

Greg Turchetta: At the top, we all have rotator images, whether it's a video or an images.

Greg Turchetta: I don't want to see guilty buildings. I can drive by your school and see the outside. I want to see the inside as a parent. And not only just the inside, I don't want generic shots of, like, a just generic tight shot of a kid or an athletic team.

I want to see your programs, I want to see your learning spaces. I'm looking around the kids to see what Brittany said earlier. Is this a place I feel comfortable putting my child?

Greg Turchetta: Because the honest truth is, parents don't care about all kids, they care about their kid. And so when they're looking at your website, they're looking to see, does this

Greg Turchetta: fit my kid, okay? So the rotator image, 10 to 14 images, a video. I want words on there that talk about your excellence, what makes you great, okay?

Greg Turchetta: Below that, I want a box that says, why choose blank county schools? And then there's more pictures and a whole bunch of facts that keep changing. They're like a rotisserie just coming around, making the argument to parents whether it's safety, academics.

Greg Turchetta: Peer supports, one-to-one technology, whatever you want.

Greg Turchetta: It's all there.

Greg Turchetta: Below that, I want somewhere to be able to book a tour. I need an apply now button, not an enroll now button. Learn that from the charter schools. Enroll is a commitment.

Apply, they're just applying.

Greg Turchetta: And then, Bertie was talking about earlier the student videos, your homepage has to have a widget that has multiple students sitting on camera. You can look at Klein, they have it. Davis, Utah has it. Raleigh, West Virginia has it.

Kids holding a little sandwich board with reason number blank.

Greg Turchetta: Why they choose the school, and then the kid, you click on it, gives you a minute of gold, of why that school means something to them.

Greg Turchetta: you… I call it… I learned this from the charter schools, too, the two thumb scroll test, because here's the thing, most parents aren't looking at your website on a desktop, they're looking at it on a mobile phone. So if I do two thumb scrolls, just two thumb scrolls, and I figure out what your district's about, what makes you unique and different, why I should choose you, and what the next step should be to enroll.

Greg Turchetta: That's passing the 60-second test on your homepage. Your homepage is talking to current families, that's why you have an enrollment problem if it doesn't have the elements that I just described. Because the sites that do are doing well.

Brittany Keil: So, Greg, I, jotted down, we've got Duval County, Klain County, Longview ISD, Davis County, Utah, what was the fifth one? I was gonna put it in the chat.

Greg Turchetta: to Texas.

Greg Turchetta: Frisco, Texas, Longview, Texas. Here are all the Texas in this list.

Brittany Keil: Oh, Socorro!

Greg Turchetta: Zoro, I mean, Humble's on the call, you can look at theirs.

Brittany Keil: Right.

Greg Turchetta: Raleigh, West Virginia is one that I've worked with recently that has these elements. These… this is the 2026 homepage.

Greg Turchetta: And if you want more, I'll show you more. If you want me to look at yours, I'll tell you where yours doesn't hit. But I think you guys can all look at it with a critical eye and say, some of these things have to go.

Greg Turchetta: Because one of the other things I… I love this is a current family will spend 5 minutes on your website looking for the lunch menu. A prospective family will give you 5 seconds, and they're gone. Or one and a half clicks, it's one or the other.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely.

Brittany Keil: So, like I said, you've got 3 ecosystems, not just one campaign, and what I want to pay attention here on this slide is what's happening in the middle column. So, what feelings are you attempting to evoke with your website?

Brittany Keil: So for pre… or for each of these funnels. For pre-K, you want families to feel safe, welcome, and nurtured. For elementary to middle school, you're going for safe, prepared, and a sense that they belong. And then by the time it gets to high school, the people you're marketing to, aka the 14-year-olds, need to feel that this is their place, that they can thrive.

Brittany Keil: So now we're going to, you know, talk exactly what, what you should do as you move forward from this. So we've given you the research, we've given you the playbook, we're also going to talk about what exactly you can do to audit what you have going on and move forward.

Brittany Keil: Greg and I are going to work through these, kind of quickly, but we've got more resources coming for each of these, in the following slides.

Brittany Keil: So first, you are going to score every single transition. All three of those buckets I just went through, you need to figure out what enrollment is looking like and what the experience is looking like. Maybe this means enlisting a friend, maybe this means, calling and pretending to enroll someone yourself. You need to find the leak and figure out where things are going wrong.

Greg Turchetta: Audit your homepage, number two. Prospective families first. Compare it versus the standard I just set for you. Use some of the districts that are in the chat.

Go see where that student voice is front and center. The rotator hits those big four words of safe, trusted, welcoming, and responsive. That's the 2026 standard we have to hit.

Brittany Keil: You need to clock your responsiveness. This is probably my favorite one on this page, but you need to figure out how long it takes a real human to actually, respond to somebody. This is tied more than anything else to advocacy that to decision difficulty, which means that families are looking for responsiveness and making decisions based on how long it takes districts to get back to them.

Greg Turchetta: I'm gonna change your title from comms chief to Marketing Director slash Director of Parent and Student Engagement, because we have got to deputize the happy parents. The research is screaming that that parent recommendation is right there with the tour.

Greg Turchetta: They're lockstep, the same thing. How do we get that word of mouth? How do we get more referrals? How do we do what Brittany said, where she got paired off with another fam… another classroom mom that is gold?

Those are… those systems cost nothing. It just takes a little bit of effort and strategy to put it in.

Brittany Keil: Fifth, you need to warm it up. Barrett, I'm actually going to ask you to do me a favor here. Can you post a link to Charlie's story from Spokane Public School that I actually shared with our entire team?

Brittany Keil: Your communications do not need to be buried in EduSpeak, and I've been talking for years, to school communicators who talk about breaking down EduSpeak, figuring out how to communicate with families. You need to throw EduSpeak in the trash, because families are telling us loud and clear that when they don't understand or when they perceive communication to be cold.

Brittany Keil: They do not respond well to it.

Brittany Keil: Warmth should be the goal here. Warmth costs attention, but not budget. This is where families are, looking for something that you're able to give without having to provide additional resources. What I'm asking Barrett to post in the chat is an incredible video of what the first day of kindergarten looks like for a student in Spokane Public Schools.

Brittany Keil: It is from her POV, she has a little camera on her shirt, and you can see just how, warm and loving and caring her day is. If I wanted to enroll in Spokane Public Schools and I saw this video, I would know exactly what my kid's day looked like, and I would be excited for them.

Greg Turchetta: Number 8, number 6, and this is the biggest one. You've got a lot of theory, you've got a lot of strategy, and a lot of practical tips from us.

Greg Turchetta: If you just go home and just try to take all this on, or just hope it gets done, it doesn't. You need an owner to have metrics on every fix. What gets measured gets done.

Greg Turchetta: Guess what? Tours, school communication, the homepage, customer service, those can all fall under your purview. Hey, come on!

Greg Turchetta: Take them on, go to the superintendent and say, I want to fix this little enrollment problem we have. Enrollment is revenue. Enrollment is money. Money makes the whole machine run.

Greg Turchetta: your superintendent will probably look at you and go, so what's your plan? We're gonna give you the plan next.

Brittany Keil: Alright, so yeah, let's talk through the plan. So first, and these, of course, we are going to send our slides out to you. We're also working on some other resources, that are kind of more, tactical templates you can take and move with.

Brittany Keil: You are running three campaigns, not 1. I'm sorry, I know that's difficult. However, this is going to help you be more effective in what, just like Greg said, is an existential threat for schools.

Brittany Keil: Adults are making the choices at kindergarten, families are negotiating in middle school, and students are driving the high school decision. How is your enrollment campaign or campaigns built to meet each of these needs, each of these personas, and each of these unique challenges?

Greg Turchetta: If you have more than one, let me know, because I think the majority of us probably had a kindergarten plan.

Greg Turchetta: Alright, action step two.

Greg Turchetta: Put Student Voice on the homepage.

Greg Turchetta: It doesn't have to be professional video, it can be an iPhone edited in CapCut, put on your homepage. Five students across programs and path, not just the honor roll kids. There's success stories at all bands of what's going on. I used to love to go into remedial rooms and show those stories and talk about how your teachers have made such an impact for them, because it matters more.

Greg Turchetta: Ask one question. What do you wish people knew about this?

Greg Turchetta: It has to be on the homepage, not buried under an About Us.

Greg Turchetta: There's one caveat to this.

Greg Turchetta: The video has to be on the homepage, but if you look at Tyler ISD, Tyler ISD has a Why Choose Tyler ISD page you need to look at. They do a good job on their homepage, their other page kills it.

Greg Turchetta: Student voice is a huge piece of it.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely, and in the video I, I showed, Kevin, you can, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was filmed on an $80 camera, something like that?

Greg Turchetta: It's like a GoPro.

Brittany Keil: The equipment was incredibly accessible, easy to use. You do not have to have a professional videography rig to make these things happen.

Brittany Keil: Alright, 3, you've got 4 words to filter every decision. Safe, welcoming, responsive, trusted.

Brittany Keil: Before anything launches, ask, which of the four does this prove? And then think about how these cost attention, but not budget. Families don't want to ask, don't ask which school is closest. They want to know which school wants them, which school is going to help their child feel wanted and supported, and where are they going to thrive.

Greg Turchetta: Number 4, I beat up your homepage enough, but I want to make a point of point number 3 here.

Greg Turchetta: First of all, you need an Apply Now button on your homepage, but you need a chatbot. A chatbot isn't a nice-to-have anymore, it's a have-to-have, because parents are going to ask questions, especially enrollment questions, on their schedule, not on your school belt schedule.

Greg Turchetta: I also want to give you an example. Longview ISD in Texas is doing something with their chatbot I haven't heard anybody else do. They have their reception, because they have a huge customer service focus, right? See this come together.

Greg Turchetta: Every one of their front desk people has their website open as the phone rings. When the phone rings and they get a question that they don't know the answer to, they type it into the chat bot and get the answer. They don't transfer it somewhere else. We don't send the parent on the rodeo that is the voicemail forwarding.

We answer it for them, and then they go a step even further than that. They tell the parent, hey.

Greg Turchetta: I just answered your question using the Longview ISD chatbot on our homepage. You can do the same thing.

Greg Turchetta: It cuts down dramatically on the number of calls that come in. It's customer service, and oh yeah, it's really responsive.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely. Also, come on, a lot of parents are millennials. They hate making phone calls. If they know you have a chatbot, they're gonna use that for sure.

Brittany Keil: Alright, nothing you buy is gonna outperform the tour. This…

Brittany Keil: This is something that matters no matter what the age, and this is also something that doesn't have to cost you money. Every other channel that you have can feed into building the tour and making it even an even stronger experience.

Greg Turchetta: Middle school's the problem. Fix it. You can't fix this, but you can bring it to your superintendent's attention, you can bring him or her these slides. We won't have Brittany explain what net promoter score is, but if you lost 14 of 17 of them, it's a problem.

Greg Turchetta: Right? Here's the contradiction. Families, middle school families, show up at events more than anyone, yet we put on less events than anyone for middle school families. Fifth grade year has to be where we go after them all year long, right?

I know some districts in Florida that are moving to K-8 to get rid of the middle school problem, and I think it's brilliant.

Greg Turchetta: Right? If you fall in love with your elementary school, you're less likely to leave. Change and transition is a chance to leave. That's the other theme of this, and they're doing it.

Brittany Keil: Greg, I had an amazing conversation with some school leaders yesterday, talking about why some families feel uncomfortable in schools, and how, if you ask them that, what was your own school experience? You often hear the reasons right there.

Brittany Keil: School was difficult for them, and they dread coming back. So what can you do to, to shift that perception? I worked at a school in Washington, D.C, that had a local restaurant donate, wings for every single open house.

Brittany Keil: Man, you tell families that an open house is catered, and they're like, well, might as well. Let's go, let's go have some wings, let's go talk to teachers, see programs. Think about what it means to build advocates, and how you can work with your community partners to make that happen.

Greg Turchetta: One other thing before we switch. If you have an APR in the end of your name, I know you love data, and I know you love research almost as much as Brittany does.

Greg Turchetta: But if you're in a district that's losing enrollment, you need the data and you need exit interviews from people that have left, and you need to go get that data and find out where they went, why they left.

Greg Turchetta: And now start to put together the picture that you can then show your schools, because what you're gonna find out is the bleed isn't at your lowest performing schools, it's actually at your highest performing schools, because those are the kids that have uber-involved parents, they're the top testers that are making up your school grade, and they're leaving.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely. We have a profile coming out in the next issue of SchoolCEO about Socorro ISD, and they realized they had an enrollment problem, and so they started calling every single family that had left their district in the last two years. They asked, why did you leave, and what would it take for you to come back?

Brittany Keil: And honestly, they said that some of the families just needed to be asked those questions, and they already decided, that they wanted to come back. We can definitely get those resources from Socorro, but they just called. They called the numbers they already had on file, and moved from there.

Brittany Keil: This relates to number 7, and this is something I think that should hit school leaders a little bit in the gut. The families you lose won't warn you.

Brittany Keil: They're not going to complain, they're not going to tell you they're going, this is not an airport. They're just going to choose another option.

Brittany Keil: This is something that surprised me a little bit. After all of this, most families said that they… that choosing their child's, education placement wasn't a difficult decision. And that means that when they want to go somewhere else, it's not difficult for them to make that decision either.

Brittany Keil: They're not going to warn you, you have to be willing to make that case every single day.

Greg Turchetta: And Brittany, one word in that second line has stood out to me since we first saw this. Unpersuaded, right? Like, that word to me has intent behind it. Like, they wanted you to win.

They wanted you to be the choice. You just didn't make a strong enough argument to persuade them to stay. And some of these other choices, they're just waving

Greg Turchetta: No technology, smaller class size, classical education, and they're gone.

Greg Turchetta: It's crazy, but they're asking for it.

Greg Turchetta: Yeandry, I have an idea for you real quick on the exit surveys. Your registration department should be doing that. Here's the other part. You have people that do their physical process of registration.

Who in your district does enrollment marketing? That's going to be you. So this is how you go in and ask for the exit survey. I'm going to be doing marketing to help you collect students.

Greg Turchetta: Have the superintendent ask your registration people to put an exit survey in place, and it'll get done. I've done it in two different districts, you just gotta ask for it.

Greg Turchetta: Alright, number 8. Your decision makers are in 8th grade.

Greg Turchetta: You have them captivated. Go ask them what will make them want to go to the high school, what will make them not want to. And then, what will make them proud to enroll? Pride is a whole other thing, right?

Build that in. Build that into the messaging.

Brittany Keil: So, we're wrapping up, but we wanted to paint a picture of what this looks like when done well.

Brittany Keil: So every single July and August, all of our social media feeds are flooded with pictures that look just like this.

Brittany Keil: But these aren't just showing off cute kids, or kids who are growing, surprisingly. These are showing off the culmination of months and months of decision making. And every district that shows up in one of these pictures has to fight and earn the right to be there.

Brittany Keil: Safe, welcoming, responsive, and trusted. This is what you're going for. This is what families need to hear and see and feel from you to make the decision to have their kids show up in your first day of school picture.

Brittany Keil: Unfortunately, this doesn't mean you only do it once. If you get them in at kindergarten, that doesn't mean you're gonna have them in high school. And you need to earn them at every single transition, at least at these three major transitions, so that you can find yourself in even more of these photos, or… and then thrive as a district.

Greg Turchetta: Brittany, I go one step further. I think it's not even the transitions anymore. I think it's a day-to-day proposition. How many times have you asked your kid, how was school today?

And if you get any answer that's short of awesome or fine, your day was just ruined, too. Parents are so fickle right now, and so responsive, so if all of a sudden this doesn't feel like the place to be.

Greg Turchetta: One, two, three bad days in a month, they're gone. They're not waiting for the end of the year, they're not waiting for the transition, they're already shopping.

Brittany Keil: Absolutely, and I will say the youth mental health crisis is part of this. Parents are scared…

Brittany Keil: And schools are more part… are a partner more than ever in supporting our youth as they grow up in, you know, in a world that looks very different than it did 20 years ago.

Brittany Keil: So, every single one of these photos are going to flood our feed next August, and you should already be laying out a plan to make sure that your district is represented in them. I want to draw attention to two things here. First, the photo you can feel.

Brittany Keil: Families want to see a photo that doesn't look perfect, that looks like their child, that looks like somebody that they could see in their own kid's class.

Brittany Keil: And then children, who are entering the high school phase, and even the middle school phase, want to see photos, they want to see representation of where they could see themselves. We know we have all kinds of kids in our districts. How do we show them what thriving looks like, no matter who they are in their district?

Greg Turchetta: Because everybody wants that picture. Now, here's the challenge. This is… this is what we're asking of you. You got 57 minutes of what we think is pretty strong information in a plan.

We're asking for your commitment. Your commitment to go back in your district and fight for these things. Where do you want to start? Tours?

Customer service? The homepage? We're here to help.

Greg Turchetta: Now, you can't do all this work on your own.

Greg Turchetta: And one of the things… here's a line you can use on your superintendent that I like to use on them. It worked yesterday.

Greg Turchetta: If our academics were off as much as our enrollment, wouldn't we have a task force for this? Like, a task force that meets weekly or bi-weekly from all the different departments to come together, like, bigger than cabinet, that comes together to solve the problem, and then the task force then reports out to the board every month on its progress? You would, wouldn't you?

Greg Turchetta: Why don't we have it for enrollment? Because in some of these states, it is the existential threat that is making budget cuts across the board.

Greg Turchetta: You have to have a task force. One person cannot do this work. It touches so many different departments, it requires so many hands, and quite frankly, you don't have time. As Brittany just laid out, we've got to fix this problem in the next couple of months, or it's going to be a bigger problem 27-28.

Greg Turchetta: And then, resources.

Greg Turchetta: I don't think there's anything we've talked about in the last 45 minutes that costs money. I mean, you can make upgrades to product, you can add things, but you don't have to go get a marketing budget to do this. You just gotta get the plans in place. You gotta say, we're gonna be about this, we're gonna sign an owner, we're gonna measure it, and this is the return we expect on this effort, and it is a district-wide priority.

Greg Turchetta: You may not feel like, from the chair you sit in, that you can make that claim that this is a district-wide priority.

Greg Turchetta: But you have the influence to go to your superintendent and make it so.

Brittany Keil: Well, thank you all so much. It's been an absolute pleasure, taking this on the virtual road. I know this is a lot of information. We're gonna be following up with resources.

We're gonna be following up with lots of, things that you can pick apart and make your own.

Brittany Keil: I think the goal here is that we want families to be in your districts, and we're hoping that resources and understanding what families are actually looking for as they make these decisions will help you get there. So thank you all, have a great rest of your Wednesday, and we hope to see you on our rest of our webinars.