NSPRA's Communication Audit Report - Harford County Public ...

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GROUP: SUPERVISORS AND NON-TEACHING PROFESSIONALS Strengths of the district ■ Teacher recruitment. ■ Teacher support. ■ Employees’ commitment to their positions and their steadfastness to students. ■ Individual comments included: • Student performance. • Excellent curricular programs. “Our initiatives are research-based.” • Generally, good public support from parents. • In the past few years, new teachers report that they appreciate the increased support. • District has one of the highest teacher retention rates. “A state survey noted that our camaraderie is great here.” Improvements needed ■ Consistency between campuses. ■ More staff. ■ Better management of e-mail. ■ Communication among the different departments. ■ Individual comments included: • Facilities are not equitable for class sizes and staffing. Student population needs vary and schools need varying resources. • HCPS has a low ratio of upper-level administration compared to other jurisdictions that has led to a limited amount of feedback to school-based leadership. “We need more central office administrators to assist the school-level administrative teams. Decisions are sometimes made at the school-level that should be made centrally so that we are all consistent.” • Clarification regarding overlapping communication tools, such as e-mails, SharePoint, InfoWeb, and the external web site. “We’re directed to these at various times but sometimes it’s hard to find what you need and you’re not sure where to look.” • Lack of written practices or protocols for department and school support staff. “Longtime staff with history will take the information with them when they retire.” • Consistent messages across the County about when and how to implement new programs, such as the Content Literacy Initiative, and clearer lines of contacts from schools to central office supervisors. “All school-based staff need to know which supervisor to contact about what.” • Departments need to have more than one person available to return calls or provide information to employees, especially in the area of certification. • There have been efforts made to clarify the appropriate uses of system e-mail, but there may not be enough information on how to provide a timely response. “We are a dependent network and if we don’t get back to one another, then we can’t get our work done.” • Parents don’t hear back from teachers and administrators quickly enough in all cases – that seems to be a common complaint. NSPRA Communication Audit 87 Harford County Public Schools
Current image of the district ■ Individual comments included: • The opinions depend on where one is. This is true for teachers and others who work for the district as well as for the public. • There is a division between the image of the “Route 40” schools and schools on the northern side of the County. • There is a great deal of local support for the schools. Each school has “raving fans,” particularly at the elementary schools. Logo ■ Although the logo has tradition behind it, it doesn’t represent 21 st century schools. ■ There’s a need for consistency in logo use. “Whatever we do, we need one consistent logo.” Best sources of news and information ■ Technology-related resources. ■ Mentors. Ways district communicates well ■ Inside Track. ■ ALERTNOW. ■ The calendar handbook and Harford Schools newspaper. ■ The online archive. ■ SharePoint. ■ Edline; but expectations about postings and updates need clarification. Effectiveness of publications ■ Harford Schools newspaper is a good publication, but it does not make it home regularly with secondary students. ■ E-schools notifications could be used to point people to the archived issues of Harford Schools newspaper. ■ School profiles online are useful. “Once a year, it would be good to send an e-mail about the school profiles.” Web site ■ The vision for Edline was to eliminate the custom school sites. ■ Historically, it was an expectation that all elementary schools have a web site, but not all have resources to help achieve this goal. ■ The redesign is good, but it is not easy to find things like Board policies on it. ■ Vision and mission is embedded in a PDF. “That should be on the home page.” ■ Hard to find contact information, such as phone numbers. Communication challenges/Improvements ■ Technology. ■ Individual comments included the following: • “We need to be more proactive about benefits and certification info because the information affects people’s lives.” NSPRA Communication Audit 88 Harford County Public Schools
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NSPRA’s Communication Audit Repor
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NSPRA Communication Audit 2 Harford
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is to determine whether it is helpi
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Educational public relations progra
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the communication loop, citing a br
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Recommendation 1: Develop a strateg
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However, with changing community ne
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streamline the efficiency of the of
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schools or departments where commun
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current technology has made it easy
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exception of sports. The Harford Sc
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greater community, such as BRAC and
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Recommendation 5: Improve communica
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distributed as well), so that every
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epresentatives (as end users) in de
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Stakeholders could sign-up on the d
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communicator network and to conside
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As HCPS’ flagship publication, th
Page 37 and 38: school motto and mascot, etc.). At
Page 39 and 40: “experienced” parents can serve
Page 41 and 42: • Encourage district leaders to b
Page 43 and 44: HCPS to have a clearly delineated p
Page 45 and 46: • Mandatory media training - We r
Page 47 and 48: The current HCPS public web site is
Page 49 and 50: • Provide additional support to s
Page 51 and 52: • Develop guidelines for marketin
Page 53 and 54: enhance the web site with streaming
Page 55 and 56: Conclusion HCPS is a quality school
Page 57 and 58: Logo ■ Needs updating. Best sourc
Page 59 and 60: Current image of the district ■ I
Page 61 and 62: • Curriculum evaluation committee
Page 63 and 64: • They want to help, yet run into
Page 65 and 66: • Have had three principals at th
Page 67 and 68: • “We need to bring our busines
Page 69 and 70: • Need to start over with high sc
Page 71 and 72: Greatest challenges facing the dist
Page 73 and 74: • The benefits sign-up process is
Page 75 and 76: Information timeliness ■ Good; ex
Page 77 and 78: Ways district communicates well ■
Page 79 and 80: Current image of the district ■ F
Page 81 and 82: GROUP: SECONDARY TEACHERS Strengths
Page 83 and 84: • To a large degree, district has
Page 85 and 86: • Principals keep getting more on
Page 87: Web site ■ In general, the web si
Page 91 and 92: ■ No “one clear voice” respon
Page 93 and 94: What people need to know ■ HCPS s
Page 95 and 96: • Construction should happen in t
Page 97 and 98: Greatest challenges facing the dist
Page 99 and 100: • Parents have their own interest
Page 101 and 102: NSPRA Communication Audit 100 Harfo
Page 103 and 104: 8. Do you feel the district does a
Page 105 and 106: Focus Group Questions for Student G
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