All-Hands Enrollment

Empowering Staff for Student Recruitment: Effective Strategies and Incentives

Avela teamed up with Erica Minor from Premier School Operations to present a live webinar on focused on strategies to involve staff in student recruitment and enrollment efforts. This discussion offers practical ideas from K-12 school marketing and enrollment experts. See the transcript below or the view the full recording.

Session Transcript

Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us today.

While I'm doing a quick preamble, if you wouldn't mind dropping in the chat, where you're tuning in from and your role at your school or organization and anything you wanna get out of today's session.

We're so grateful to have you here.

We're really looking forward to a great discussion.

We have charter school organizations registered and joining us from all across the country ready to dive into ideas on how to engage your staff in the student recruitment and enrollment process.

I'm Andrea Gramberg, a marketing lead here at a Bella and mobile service kind of our moderator today and behind the scenes.

A big welcome to our guest speaker, Erica Minor from premier school operations.

Erica met the Avela team a few months ago at the charter school development conference.

We actually sat in on a session that Erica led sharing some fabulous best practices around driving student enrollment initiatives.

And which really resonated with us very aligned to some of the questions that we get from our clients at a bea in their in enrollment work.

So I think, I believe most folks that are joining us are actively working with Avela today, but we do have a couple of newbies in the session or that may watch the recording after.

I do want to share a little bit about Avela and why we've asked you all to join us today.

So we are a provider of modern school application and enrollment solutions founded by two professors of economics, Josh Res and PG Paddock and their work at mit blueprint labs to really run equitable enrollment practices and school choice lotteries.

So Avea was really born out of that work through technology to scale those best practices.

So today, we work with education organizations including charter schools, networks and even a few common charter applications to help manage the enrollment process and run equitable lotteries in their communities.

So we often get asked about strategies and guidance on how to actually drive enrollment while we aren't a marketing or communication agency, we are well connected in the industry and run programs like this with great partners like Erica to bring these resources to you.

So just a couple of housekeeping items before we dive in, we are gonna be using the chat function today for some interactivity.

So I just wanna make sure that's on and working for you.

And then we also welcome you to drop any questions that you have for Erica throughout the presentation in the Q and A function.

And then we'll make sure to save time at the end of today's session to address those.

So without further ado, let me pass the presentation over to Erica.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me Andrea.

Good morning everyone or good afternoon to those that are on the east Coast.

Thank you for that introduction.

I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen so that we can get started.

So today I'll be leading a session on empowering staff for student recruitment and we'll be discussing effective strategies and incentives to get our staff a part of the process of effectively recruiting and enrolling students.

As Andrea mentioned, my name is Erica Minor.

I am the founder of premier school operations.

I've been working in charter schools for a little over 10 years.

Now I started my career with Uncommon schools in Brooklyn New York as an office manager.

I was there for about two years.

I then transitioned to Atlanta in which I started working for an independent school.

And that is when I saw the gap in professional development that was offered to operation professionals.

So at uncommon, they were very intentional about teaching their operational teams how to manage their time, how to have difficult conversations and even how to recruit and enroll students.

But in Atlanta, I didn't have that same type of support.

So that's when I had this brilliant idea of starting a company, I realized that I was still very new in school operations and had a lot to learn about navigating this new world.

So I relocated back to New York.

I worked for KPNYC for five years and in 2019, I started premier school operations.

So almost five years later, we worked with a little over 70 schools across the country supporting particularly around recruitment and enrollment, helping operational teams to develop operational plans and different strategies around how they can do their work effectively.

So I'm really excited to be meeting with you all today just to share on how we can effectively empower our staff in the recruitment and enrollment process.

So we'll start with a very quick icebreaker.

I'll then jump into six different strategies that you can implement in order to engage your staff in recruitment and enrollment.

I'll then follow up with a few key takeaways and then open the floor for Q and A s.

So I wanted to start just by asking you all, does your school actively engage teachers and staff in student recruitment efforts?

If you wouldn't mind just dropping your experiences or response in the chat, I would greatly appreciate it.

So here just looking to understand if your staff is currently a part of your process of recruiting and enrolling.

So from my experience working with different schools and different school leaders, some leaders require their staff to participate in recruitment and enrollment while others make it on a voluntary basis.

So I believe that this is really up to the school leadership to decide.

However, given the urgency around recruitment and enrollment, it is an all hands on deck.

So if we can have our staff and our teachers participate in this process, I do believe that schools will see a significant increase in their recruitment numbers.

And so I wanted to ground us with a couple of statements around student recruitment and the participation of staff.

So student recruitment isn't just a task.

It's a collective responsibility that defines the very essence of your school's mission.

Every staff member from teachers to administrators plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of your school.

By actively engaging in recruitment efforts together, you form an interconnected network of ambassadors united in your commitment to welcoming and nurturing every prospective student who walks through your doors by recognizing recruitment as a shared endeavor, you empower each member to contribute their unique talents and passion towards building a vibrant and inclusive school community.

You'll notice on this slide that there are a couple of words bolded and these words really resonated most with me because student recruitment is not the responsibility of an operations team member or the principal of the school.

It is a collective responsibility.

It is a pivotal role that every team member, every teacher and administrator and staff member should participate in because it makes up the vision and mission of your school.

So the first strategy is communication and while this may seem very simple and something that we're like, oh, of course, they know we should not assume we need to be very clear on communicating our recruitment and enrollment goals to our staff, discussing the strategies that we're going to implement in order to meet those goals and sharing our progress with all of our staff members.

So for me as an ops professional, typically, what I would do is at the beginning of the recruitment season, when our application would go live, I would present at our staff meeting.

I would say today is the first day that our application is live to our families.

We are expecting to enroll 90 students for kindergarten and we are going to get to that 90 by canvassing within our community by doing door knocking social media advertising.

So really running through all of the strategies and this is an opening for you to ask for volunteers, right?

There are some staff members that are really passionate about talking to people or social media.

So we want to kind of gauge people's interest by talking about the strategies that we plan to implement.

You also want to ensure that everyone understands the importance of student recruitment and how it impacts the school community.

So I've sat in meetings with school leaders and they say, well, I don't want to tell my teachers that if we don't recruit 90 students, then we may need to let some people go.

I agree that sometimes having that conversation upfront can shift the culture and the mindset of your staff.

But you want to preface the conversation around.

We need to enroll students so that we can ensure that we have our school facility so that we can ensure we have supplies and staff.

We need to not dance around this because it is important in many schools across the country are experiencing a decline in enrollment and some have unfortunately had to close due to that.

So we want to be very transparent in our communication with our teachers and our staff to let them know what our goals are and what we need from them in order to support.

So a couple of action steps that you can immediately implement is presenting at your next staff meeting.

So letting them know if you haven't already done so that you are recruiting and enrolling students, you're looking for volunteers to support in three or 3 to 5 areas and you wanna include those, you wanna include that information in an upcoming newsletter or a staff email.

If you have a general bulletin board where you just keep information about your school, you wanna make sure that you have that information there.

So the name of the game here is to over communicate and let everyone in your building know that you are recruiting and enrolling students.

The next strategy is training.

We want to provide training sessions and workshops, to educate your staff and show them how to effectively recruit students and families.

So you may have people who are eager and excited to help, but we wanna make sure that we're providing them with adequate training so that they can do this.

Well, we want to teach them how to talk to families.

How do we canvass within our community?

What are some of the things that we need to say in order to attract families?

And it's also important to help them understand how their roles contribute to the overall recruitment efforts.

So for this statement here, I'm thinking particularly about the data, if your student recruitment data has told you in the past that 30% of your families come from, let's say community outreach and canvassing.

And now you have six teachers that are excited to support in this work, share those data points with them, help them to understand that 30% of your student population have come from this particular avenue of marketing and outreach.

So when they understand the importance of it, I think that will help them to be bought in and continue to support in that work.

So a couple of action steps around training, you wanna identify an area in which you would like your staff to provide support, you wanna set a training date and then start to prepare the materials, whether it's call scripts, whether it's postcards, whether it's flyers, pens tapes, get everything together.

So that when you meet with them, you are ready and prepared, you want to practice with them, what this work is going to look like.

So you should be role playing and helping them to understand some challenges that they may encounter when they are doing this work, then you're ready, you're ready to go off and do the work.

And once you're done, you want to ask for some feedback, you wanna understand what are some of the things that worked well and what are some of the things that need to be improved upon?

So sometimes we look at things from a very narrow lens because we've been doing this work for quite some time.

But when we have outsiders that are supporting, they can see it from a different perspective.

So we always want to gather some feedback to identify what we can do better.

Next time, the next strategy is offering incentives.

These can be rewards for people who participate in recruitment efforts or even the referral of prospective students.

I've seen incentives work and I've also seen other incentives not be as successful.

So on this slide here, I'm gonna share some examples of different types of incentives that you can offer.

Some monetary incentives include a bonus or commission for each enrolled student, referred by a staff member.

So one school that I worked with, they offered a $25 bonus for every student that enrolled and showed up on the first day.

I had another school that said, ok, we want to provide this incentive by count day.

So that's a, a longer time span for someone to wait for this incentive.

So it, it's really up to you to decide and to gauge your staff, would they be willing to wait more time for this incentive or is it better to provide it with the, provide it to them upfront?

The risk that you do run when you provide that incentive upfront is what if that student does not show up?

Next is offering a monetary reward for achieving recruitment milestones.

So let's say you say to your staff, I wanna receive 30 applications within the next 30 days.

When they meet that milestone, you may provide a monetary reward or incentive.

Another incentive is additional paid time off or flexible work hours as a reward for successful recruitment efforts.

What I've seen some schools do is provide a flex work day.

So instead of having to be at school at seven, they could come in at nine and leave at dismissal if you are experiencing some budget constraints and you're like, oh, I can't really do a monetary incentive.

There are other things that you can do.

You can provide your staff with an award at a staff meeting and talk about how they were exceptional in their recruitment efforts and they were able to recruit X number of families.

Next is a personalized thank you, note or letter from the school leadership expressing their gratitude for their recruitment efforts.

And last is just that public acknowledgment, whether it's in a newsletter or a staff email, just thinking about how you can acknowledge your staff members for participating.

One thing that we know for sure is that student recruitment and enrollment is outside of the typical job description of many people in your school buildings, from your teachers to your pair of professionals, maybe even your assistant principals.

So asking them to take on this work is another task for them to do.

And we wanna make sure that we are offering them some type of incentive to continue to support us nexus team collaboration.

So you want to encourage your team who has said yes, I'm going to do this work.

You want to encourage them to brainstorm ideas, share best practices and support each other in recruitment activities.

One thing that I know to be true when I started this work 10 years ago.

So my way of recruiting looks really different than my way of recruiting now.

And I still believe that there are new ways and innovative ways to recruit and engage with families.

So always be open to collaboration and hearing new ideas around how you can get more students and families in your doors.

And so a couple of things here that you can do is host regular team meetings to share successful recruitment strategies and brainstorm new ideas together.

You always wanna identify what's working well and what needs improvement.

What I tell teams to do is spend at least 10 to 15 minutes talking about the things that need improvement because you can take the time to really develop strategies to improve them and execute on them fairly quickly.

Next is to utilize a dedicated online platform or group chat where staff can easily communicate, share resources and collaborate on recruitment efforts.

So we don't necessarily want to create more work for people, but we want to have an easy way to communicate.

So whether that's a group chat or an email thread, just making sure that people have at least one means of way to communicate.

The next strategy is community outreach.

So you want to involve your staff in community outreach events such as school tours, open houses and other recruitment activities, allow them to interact with prospective students and families and showcase your school strengths.

So two of the outreach activities here that I think are extremely important are your school tours and your open houses.

Typically, these should happen during the day when families can see your school in action.

So you can do a school tour during the day and then an open house in the evening.

But we want to give them a glimpse into your school.

You want to showcase those classrooms, those teachers, your school facility because people really care about the aesthetics.

So the insight that you're providing to your teachers when families are in the building is that their classrooms are neat and tidy.

Their bulletin boards are up to date.

You know, their students know that they're going to be visited, know that they will be visitors.

So really thinking about the experience you want families to have when they enter your building.

So a few action steps here is you want to assign staff members specific roles during these events, such as leading tours, participating in panel discussions or hosting informational booths.

You also wanna encourage select staff members to share personal anecdotes and insights about the school during recruitment events to create authentic connections with prospective families.

What I've seen in working with many schools is that this community outreach piece really makes a difference as to whether a family will say yes, they are going to enroll or no, they are not going to enroll.

So really think about what your school setting is right now and if there are areas for you to improve upon, so that when families do enter your building, they have a positive experience.

And the last strategy is around school leadership.

So school leaders should actively participate in recruitment efforts and demonstrate their commitment to enrollment goals.

Their enthusiasm and involvement will inspire staff members to engage more effectively in recruitment activities.

I've seen school leaders that have taken the charge on recruiting and enrolling.

And if we want our staff to follow their lead, they have to set the example of what it looks like.

So they should be attending recruitment events, participating in outreach efforts and engaging with prospective families directly.

They should also be responsible for sharing some regular updates and progress on enrollment goals during staff meetings, reinforcing the importance of recruitment efforts and celebrating success.

So the person who's responsible for recruitment and enrollment, whether that's an assistant principal or a director of operations should be working very closely with the school leader so that they are participating in these recruitment efforts.

They know when these events are taking place, they're present during a school tour or an open house and they are really setting the example and the tone of what it looks like for staff to participate.

So here are some key takeaways that I would love for you all to start to think about and identify how you can implement this within your own school.

You wanna first clearly communicate those enrollment goals, the strategies and the progress to all of your staff members ensure everyone understands the importance of their involvement in recruitment activities.

Next is to provide those training sessions and workshops to educate staff on the importance of student recruitment and enrollment and help them to understand how their roles contribute to the overall recruitment efforts.

And then last is involve your staff in community outreach events such as those school tours and open houses so that they have an opportunity to interact with prospective families and showcase your school's strengths.

And now I am gonna open the floor for Q and A.

Are there any questions a quick reminder to use the Q and A function or any questions for Erica?

Maybe while we're waiting for folks to reflect, I am wondering Erica if you recommend I guess my question is more around timing.

So do you recommend running some of these ideas and strategies as a program with like specific timelines that are maybe aligned to the enrollment cycle in your community?

Or should these be more sort of ongoing or like or have you seen both successful?

I'm, I'm curious, that's a good question.

I've seen both run pretty successful.

Typically schools should do this as, as soon as their application goes live, but we know life happens and sometimes we're not able to do it at that time, but I want to say that it's never too late, right?

Like I know that school is quickly approaching closing, but we still need to recruit and enroll students.

So still talk about it, still talk about those goals if you need support at an upcoming open house, if you need families to support and canvassing, I would definitely still try to implement these things, although school may be closing soon.

All right.

I believe we have a question coming in through Janisha.

Erica.

Are you able to see that question?

Yes.

Joni's question is, should areas of improvement be discussed in large meetings?

70 plus people or save for smaller meetings with less than 10 or both?

We have a weekly meeting with recruitment leaders from 70 campuses, but I'm not sure if that is the best meeting to discuss areas of improvement since they can be different for each school.

That's a great question.

I would say I would ask for areas of improvement via a survey and then I would take that data and talk about it in the group of less than 10, I think for 70 people to talk about areas of improvement that may take up the majority of your meeting time.

So I would ask that question via a survey and then discuss that in a smaller meeting with the 10 or, or less people.

Great.

Keep the questions coming.

One other thing that was top of mind for me, I'm curious if I out of, you know, I wanna be respectful of, you know, the programs of individual schools.

So maybe sharing some examples without, you know, maybe, maybe giving away some of their, their secret sauce.

But anything kind of practical that our audience might be able to take away and, and be able to implement you know, in the coming days and weeks.

That's a good question.

I think starting with asking for volunteers to support, with recruitment and enrollment.

I think that's one of the quickest things that you can do to see if people are actually interested in supporting, understanding what their, where their interest lies and then developing a plan for them to execute.

I've worked with schools that do not make recruitment and enrollment support mandatory for teachers and those schools are struggling because they are currently understaffed on the operation side.

So they're trying to still meet the numbers with 2 to 3 people when previously they had 5 to 7 people and in some cases even 10.

o just start with asking who is willing to help finding out where their interest lies and then getting them started with some materials, providing them with some resources so that they're able to execute on it fairly quickly.

Yeah, there's another question in the chat.

Have you noticed a significant increase in engagement when offering monetary incentives?

We are interested in offering an incentive as we know, teachers value their work life balance and it can be challenging to get them involved in efforts other than mandatory open house events.

I've seen schools offer monetary incentives and see success because the requirement that they were asking was fairly minimal.

So the example that I shared before of the $25 for the enrolled student, teachers really gravitated towards that because it was just a matter of them telling their cousin telling their niece, telling their nephew, it didn't require a lot on their end.

So as you think about the monetary incentive also think about what the ask will be.

And if it will be a heavy lift for the teachers, the school that I'm working with here in New York, they offer their teachers $100 an hour to canvas.

The line for teachers to volunteer to do this.

Canvassing is significantly long and they currently have a wait list.

So my advice to them is don't just tell them that you want them to canvass be really clear on what that work looks like.

So when you canvass, I need you to come back with at least three leads because that will resonate with the school like, OK, we spent $100 an hour and that equated to three leads.

So just being intentional about the ask and the monetary incentive.

the next question is we have a large group of parents signed up for our parent referral program 700 but they have to refer five families to redeem.

The first referral, we haven't had one parent redeem five referrals.

What can we do to improve this program?

That is a good question.

My first question for you and, and we can talk offline if this makes more sense, but I'm wondering why the number is five referrals.

Is it that five referrals equates typically to one enrolled student?

I think I just need a little more context here to understand to better be able to answer that question.

No, just a pilot program.

Five referrals is about $5 for the t-shirt value.

I would think about how this program is being communicated to families.

Are you sharing it in your newsletter?

Are you talking about it at arrival and dismissal?

I would really think about how this is being communicated to families and the incentive that's being offered to help to kind of boost the excitement for it.

Are there any additional questions?

Ok.

Well, I have to a resource that I would like to share with you all that just kind of speaks in a little more detail around the engagement strategies that we discussed today.

And I also have the option for you all to schedule a call if you would like to connect further, if you have additional questions about the content or just wanna bring some brainstorm some ideas about how to effectively recruit and enroll students.

I'm just dropping the links as well.

And we'll make sure to queue all of this up in our follow up email.

Well, if you have other questions for Erica, we can definitely stay on on the call, but for those of you that may have to drop, we so appreciate your time.

Erica, sharing these great important strategies and, and tailoring your your presentation for our audience today really focused on, on driving family engagement and student recruitment in their communities.

And we hope today's presentation was helpful and that you can apply this great guidance to your work.

Like I mentioned, look for an email from us on the Avela team with a recording of today's presentation and a package of resources like the links that we shared.

As always, the Avela team is also here to help particularly our client services team for you to unpack any of the guidance today, kind of go through some examples that might work for your community or your school and apply this to your enrollment work.

o with that, we'll, we'll close out today.

Look for that email and have a wonderful rest of your day.

Thank you everyone.