PR
at its Best!
By Jeff Forster
Pop Quiz for fellow charter school leaders:
A newspaper education reporter, an AP correspondent and two local TV crews
are waiting outside your office -- without invitation. What do you do?
(A) Lock your door until they go away.
(B) Slip out your window to the parking lot.
(C) Smile and invite them in to discuss calmly the “crisis” they
have come to cover.
A and B are tempting for those of us who have been through so-called “communications
crises,” but C is what you want to do --and prepare for.
No matter how good your school is, things will happen. Students (and teachers)
will misbehave. Auditors will find problems in your books. Anti-charter school
forces will use any excuse to attack any charter school. No matter how friendly
the media have been to your school so far, reporters regard themselves as
“adversaries” when they smell negative news for their newscasts
and front pages.
Most charter schools are innovative by nature and vulnerable to such “crisis”
coverage. Here are my 10 tips for dealing with unfriendly media:
- To protect your
school, get the facts ASAP. Know who made mistakes, if any, and why.
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- Designate one spokesperson -- a superintendent,
a principal, a professional spokesperson.
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- Set up a regular briefing time and
place for media or at least a regular briefing procedure.
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- Craft 3 or 4 key messages and stick
to them, repeating them often in your answers.
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- Develop an internal Q & A for
the spokesperson. You should practice the Q & A before a media
briefing or interview.
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- Do not lie or guess. Tell the truth
or explain that you do not have information about that at this time.
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- Don’t use the phrase “no
comment.” It sounds abrupt and evasive. Respond by repeating
a message you want to see in media reports while gracefully avoiding
a direct answer to a difficult question.
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- Inform other target audiences, including
employees, parents, regulators, community leaders and others vital
to your survival and success about what is happening. Don’t
let media reports be their only source of information.
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- Monitor the media. Update and correct
media reports if necessary.
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- Prepare for a crisis. Provide media
training and crisis planning for key players before a crisis hits.
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Facing up to media challenges is an important skill for charter
school leaders. At times, negative coverage of your school can even have a
positive effect.
In the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow's (ECOT) startup years, we endured both positive and
negative media coverage -- mostly all traceable to our innovative nature as
a pioneer e-school. This coverage helped with student recruitment. Parents didn’t
care about the headlines, because they wanted an e-school for their children.
But don’t rely on such a media phenomenon. Prepare for
a crisis and you will survive and succeed.
Jeff Forster is Superintendent of Ohio's
Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, the nation’s largest charter
e-school with about 4,700 students. He has more than 35 years experience
as principal and superintendent. ECOT has been a vanguard in the charter
e-school movement since opening in 2000.
