Teaching in Public Schools
Found in: Marketing & Advertising
Cathy H., California
Has anyone ever done anything with public schools? I recently received clearance from a school district to advertise in 5 elementary schools (about 5,000 kids) in a neighboring city. Neil and I have discussed this and how to handle it. I’m still in the planning stages and will be for a while, until I feel very comfortable with it all. Who knows what will happen..
Right now the current plan is to go into one school at a time. (I don’t want to be overwhelmed with too many students it will make me and SM look bad). I’m trying to decide if, in addition to distributing fliers, I should do an FIS during a school assembly with parents present. Maybe I would use some students to play, or perhaps I’ll just meet with the PTA. A PTA co-chair I know had suggested putting on a recital, but for lots of reasons I’m reluctant to do this. If anyone has done anything like this and would be willing to share their experiences of what worked and didn’t I’d sure appreciate it.
Cheryl G., Pennsylvania
How did you get permission to do that? I don’t think the public schools would ever allow that around here.
Cathy H., California
Some school districts will allow it. One of the things I did at the law firm was to prepare what is called an RFP (Request for Proposal). Basically this is a bid for work contracted with a city or county. Sometimes they are very detailed and up to 100 pages – obviously not needed for this, but I used the general idea.
I created a formal packet of SM information that included a letter on SM letterhead, articles about SM and several different fliers that were customized with my information, and sent it to the Superintendent of Schools. The packet was then forwarded to Educational Services.
I received a very positive response about SM within 2 days of mailing it. However permission was denied. The response was by email and said, “Sorry we only distribute fliers for non-profit organizations”. After a couple of emails we got this straightened out. Apparently, the School District thought I wanted THEM to distribute the fliers. Obviously not, I just wanted permission to go to the school and do it myself. Educational Services said it was no problem and gave me permission to go onsite to each individual school and send home the fliers with the children. I have received permission to do some other things as well, but will get back to you on that later.
As you can probably imagine there is a lot of planning that needs to be done here, so for now the plans to go forward with this are on hold. I probably won’t do much with it until late Sept or October.
Cheryl G., Pennsylvania
How do you plan to distribute the flyers yourself?
Cathy H., California
The kids have weekly envelopes that they take home to parents with their homework and ads etc. The fliers can be put in those.