The Goshen School Board voted unanimously last week to spend nearly $190,000 on marketing, hiring Villing & Co. to help attract prospective students to the district.
Some constituents and readers had a bit of sticker shock at the $189,500 the district will give the public relations firm to help with its website and advertising. Some questioned the use of taxpayer dollars, which is a reasonable response.
The reality is this is just the cost of doing business in the education realm in Indiana. The decision to hire a firm to help with new logos, social media, advertising, a brochure and a website makeover is merited.
Since Indiana passed its school voucher law in 2011, families can elect to send students to private schools and get reimbursed for part of the cost from the state. Charter schools also compete for students in Indiana. Elkhart County doesn’t yet have a charter school, but some believe it may just be a matter of time before it does.
School systems now compete for students. A district’s reputation isn’t just something that affects where people purchase a home, it’s something that drives where students actually go to school in a state where there is freedom to choose.
Simply put, each student is worth about $6,000 in annual funding from the state to a school system. As Superintendent Diane Woodworth said at the meeting where the board voted, what the school system is paying Villing & Co. would be recouped if it attracts or at least retains 30 students.
In many ways, this decision comes down to how you do the math. Some would say that the money would fund several teachers. So, is spending money on marketing taking away from education or making sure there are students in the school system taking advantage of the excellent International Baccalaureate or music programs Goshen Community Schools already has? Board member Cathie Cripe also said if you don’t market a school system, you affect property values.
In the modern realm, a school system needs a good website and a presence in the marketplace where it is competing for students. Villing & Co. will help Goshen Community Schools with that. The only real questions here are whether the School Board should have handled the public process leading up to the decision any differently and whether it should have gone with the top tier marketing plan of the three available to GCS. That tier includes $20,000 for a video or public presentation and though the other pieces seem reasonable that one sticks out as a potentially high price for what’s delivered.
Goshen Community Schools shouldn’t be faulted for hiring a PR firm to help with marketing. It’s an unintended consequence of the state’s charter school and voucher programs. Goshen Community School officials believed they not only needed to do this, but couldn’t afford not to spend money on what has become a cost of doing business in modern education.