Strengthening Family Engagement in Public Schools

ThinK-12 Families™

for Public K-12 Districts & Schools

Public school enrollment is facing an existential crisis. And while COVID has made matters worse, schools and districts were already experiencing declining enrollment long before the pandemic. Families who delayed kindergarten starts, home schooled, sent their kids to private school or switched to virtual school meant lost revenue for schools and districts whose funding is tied to enrollment. Not to mention declining birth rates in many parts of the U.S.

In the post-COVID world, experts predict a continued and INCREASED enrollment decline for public schools, which will create a devastating downward spiral impacting every part of education, including:

Student academic and non-academic resources

Building infrastructure

School technology investment

Shortage of School and District leadership

College and career planning

Shortage of Teachers, their quality, training and pay rates

Mental health services

Extra-curricular activities/Sports

Graduation rates

College-goers

Unless We Change the Trend

While there are many variables to improving education, it all starts with driving and protecting student enrollment. School funding impacts everything, and its connection to enrollment is the only constant. Today, District and School Leaders have the power to stabilize and even grow their enrollment, leading to higher and more predictable funding.

At ThinK-12, we believe schools and districts must change the way they view themselves before they can change the way students and families view them. It’s time for a world where schools and districts market themselves the way colleges and universities have done for a hundred years. Most public schools and districts feel they don’t need to market themselves similarly to college enrollment strategies because they have a ‘built-in” customer base. This is a dangerous position to take. Today, educational opportunities are global, not local. Parents have already demonstrated this by opting for private school enrollment, virtual, or homeschooling even though the public school is a mile from their home.

Location is NO LONGER the deciding factor when education is at stake. This geo-convenient thinking is risky for district and school leaders and does not reflect today’s education environment.

Yes, there will always be families who attend your school because it’s the traditional “school district map” model (we call this E.G.E.™…see below), but more and more families are realizing they now have other options.

Your role as a district or school leader is to acknowledge this new reality and change the way you run your business (yes, your BUSINESS).

“The two most important factors in running successful schools: Enrollment, Engagement and Retention of Families, and Recruitment and Retention of Staff.”

Dr. Joanne Harrison

Former Deputy Superintendent
School Board of Broward County

Public Education is at a Tipping point.

And that’s where the team at ThinK-12 comes in. For more than 20 years, we have worked with thousands of colleges and universities to help them create and market their brand to students and families. And now we’re bringing that experience to K-12.

For both K-12 and Higher Ed, revenue drives success and enrollment drives revenue. It’s time K-12 schools and districts used marketing strategies and tools to attract families to their brand. Yes. Their BRAND.

At ThinK-12, we use our decades of experience in Higher Ed marketing and technology and expertise in family engagement and K-12 teacher education to create strong brands and incredible user experiences for K-12 schools and districts. This drives enrollment, which drives district and school revenue, and that affects every facet of success for your school.

Every district and school has a great story to tell. If they don’t know what it is, we uncover it. Or create it. And then create comprehensive plans to promote it. With interactive tools to engage prospective and current families.

Ready to Increase Student Enrollment at Your Public School?

Why Now?

Because it’s more important than ever that districts and schools take control of their future by taking control of their enrollment. Yes, even within a district schools must compete for enrollment, and not simply rely on E.G.E.™…

Enrollment Geographic Expectation (E.G.E.: A school or district’s expectation that families in its geographic area will naturally attend their schools)

ThinK-12 Families is a revolutionary approach to driving enrollment, family engagement and retention for schools and districts. It’s a web and mobile application that supercharges school websites and communication with richer and visually stunning experiences for prospective and current families.

Attract, engage and enroll prospective and current families with interactive features that get them excited, committed, and loyal to your school.

ThinK-12 Families is a set of exciting features that work together to elevate the future and current family experience. Future and current families are your customers, and your school is the service provider.

Families have options. Your school must present your story in a compelling and professional way in order to enroll (and retain) families. Remember, the days of E.G.E.™ (Enrollment Geographic Expectation) are over! Today you must work to attract, engage and retain families, just like higher ed institutions have been doing for years.

ThinKTank™

Sometimes families need to be better informed about their choices, and why a public school education can be their best educational option. The team of professional content developers at ThinK-12 craft expertly written, service-based content to engage and inform future and current families about all the things they need to know in order to make the best educational choice for their family.

Content is scaffolded by grade band, so families with an incoming Kindergartener can get the information they need, while families with an incoming 6th or 9th grader can best prepare to make the right choice for their child. Returning families are provided with content to keep them engaged and informed about how they can best support their child’s education collaboratively with the school.

The key with service-based content is positioning YOUR SCHOOL as the source of the content. This builds trust and affinity between families and your school.

Some topics include:

Our library of Service-based content in ThinKTank™ is constantly growing, offering everything they need to make the best decision for their family.

Custom Content

Deepening the content experience for your school, our team of writers creates CUSTOM CONTENT to tie our service-based content specific to your school. Custom content highlights YOUR offerings, YOUR successes, and YOUR points of differentiation. And if you’re not sure what those are, we create them for you. It’s the value of outside content experts who can see the best your school has to offer and then craft it into a compelling story.

Custom content solidifies the connection of service-based content to YOUR school.

Increase Public School Enrollment Today

Q&A Videos

Don’t underestimate the “wow” factor and how it can influence families and increase public school enrollment. ThinK-12 Q&A Videos are an interactive, technical display of professionally produced videos of student, parent, staff, and alumni ambassadors from your school. Q&A Videos capture video-based answers to your most common questions from future and current families. We’ll even work to develop answers to questions families may not even think to ask.

Videos bring stories to life. It’s the foundation for media engagement across every generation. And for parents, Q&A Videos show the character, emotion, and passion for your school, something that can be difficult to convey purely through the written word.

Yet it’s the technical delivery of the videos that gives parents an engaging experience like no other. In an intuitive Q & A format, parents can scroll through questions they have and then see the corresponding videos that answer those questions. The connection delivered through the Q & A interface drives a deep engagement for parents that lets them control the flow of what they are viewing.

Another outstanding benefit of the Q & A Videos is the authenticity captured by our video experts. Getting at the essence of a question’s answer is an art, and how that answer is conveyed to parents can make or break their commitment to your school.

Following our Q&A Videos Success Guide™, your school will select five or more people to answer questions on video. These can be students, parents, staff, alumni, or any combination. The videos get customized by our video production team, who post-produce and load the videos into our proprietary Q&A Videos engine. The result is an outstanding, professionally produced experience for families that answers their most pressing questions and gets them excited about your school. There’s simply nothing like it.

Family Network™

Some families will attend a school because they know other families there and they value community. Some families stay at a school for the very same reason. One thing is for certain; schools are for families, not just kids. And giving families the ability to connect and network with each other is a service your school should provide because connected families drive enrollment and retention. Schools already know this as a fact- they’ve been using PTAs, parent conferences, and family events for years to drive deeper family connections to their school.

Today, the family experience can be taken to the next level through technology, meeting families in the digital world. The ThinK-12 Family Network is a private community that allows your families to connect and engage, strengthening their bond with your school. Simple things like enabling parent connections can deepen confidence in and support of your school. “Customer Communities” are everywhere… except in schools. It’s time that changed.

Future families can see limited information in the ThinK-12 Family Network, while current families have full access. Families can set their preferences for how much information they want to share. Future families will see the Family Network as an incredible networking tool, enabling connections from child play dates to adult professional collaboration.

Increase Public School Enrollment

ThinK-12 Outcomes™

One of the biggest questions future and current families have is about Outcomes. What can they expect for their child from your school? And not just immediate outcomes, but their full educational and career journey. Where do students go after your school? How do they perform on state-reported assessments? What special programs do they attend at your school or when they transition to the next grade level? What colleges do they attend? What career paths do they forge? How do they positively shape the community and impact society? While no one can predict a student’s path with certainty, historical performance DOES give families confidence and DOES influence their enrollment decisions. Outcome highlights in your ThinK-12 program will showcase your outcomes in an interactive, engaging way, driving enrollment and re-enrollment rates for your school.

Clubhub™

We all know there’s so much more for students to discover and experience at a school besides academics. Schools have clubs and organizations designed to spark curiosity and quench students’ thirst for passions and interests. This goes far beyond organized sports or the marching band.

With Clubhub, schools can showcase and even promote their clubs to students and families, increasing the likelihood students will get involved. And just like in Higher Ed, student engagement in clubs and activities directly affects retention rates and social experiences at a school.

Chances are, your school has more clubs and organizations than most students (and nearly ALL parents) are aware of. Clubhub changes this by improving club visibility and appeal and calls-to-action that encourage involvement. Clubs are selling points of your school. Obscuring them limits the effect they can have on your students and the influence they can have on parents when making enrollment and retention decisions.

Clubs are rarely, if ever, promoted to future or current parents. Driving club awareness to parents equips them to encourage their child to engage in and explore everything your school has to offer.

With Clubhub, your clubs and organizations are points of pride and play an important role in engaging future and current families.

Staff Directory

Staff directories at schools are boring and difficult to navigate. They also provide no information to parents about the people educating their child. That’s changed with the ThinK-12 Staff Directory.

At ThinK-12, we re-imagined what a school staff directory should be, and built it. When we spoke with parents, they told us they wanted to know more about their child’s teachers and an easier way to connect and ally with them. Our approach was to ‘humanize’ the staff by sharing their interests and passions, their commitment to students, and of course, making it easier to connect with them.

Education is a three-way partnership: Teacher—Child—Parent. And when communication between teachers and parents is inhibited or difficult, partnerships can break down and not achieve their full potential. Facilitating the connection between staff and parents is paramount in the partnership equation.

The ThinK-12 Staff Directory not only makes this easier, but it also makes it inviting by showing staff as real people and not just teachers behind concrete walls. Staff, like parents, have families, pets, passions, and dreams. Connections around any one of those between staff and parent promote compassion, empathy, and alliance. These are the factors that allow staff to provide the best education to students and facilitate cooperation and collaboration with parents.

ThinK-12 Chat

Get ready to drastically improve customer service for future and current families (yes, your families are your customers). ThinK-12 Chat is an AI-based (artificial intelligence) chat interface that answers most enrollment-based questions from families. The custom-built AI information engine powers ThinK-12 Chat for your school or district, simplifying parent inquiries and providing them with quick answers to their most commonly asked questions. It even provides links to your enrollment forms and can output important dates for upcoming events.

ThinK-12 Chat is a great tool that can drastically reduce your office staff’s time spent answering commonly-asked questions, freeing them up for other tasks.

Think of it as an extension of your team, reducing the burden on your school office personnel.

The amazing thing about ThinK-12 Chat is that with artificial intelligence, the program gets smarter over time, creating even greater economic efficiencies for your office. But creating efficiency for parents can be even more impactful. It not only answers their questions faster, it gives parents confidence in your school and a stronger sense of community. It also demonstrates to them that you use modern tools to simplify processes and experiences, and this affects the entire customer (family) perception of your school. Even little things like AI-based Chat can give parents confidence that the overall school experience is also being smartly managed for both them and their children.

Chances are, you’ve experienced this first-hand in other areas of your life. Take a moment to think about how smart and efficient customer service increases your confidence in a brand. That’s precisely what you can offer parents with AI-based Chat. In fact, NOT having AI-based chat for your customers (parents) shines a spotlight on how antiquated and inefficient many schools really are. You now have the power to change that.

ThinK-12 Connect

One of the biggest challenges for schools is managing a robust, behavioral email campaign with future and current families. The importance of this cannot be understated. Yet for most K-12 schools, there is no concerted email campaign dedicated to continued enrollment, engagement, and retention efforts.

There are many reasons for this…

ThinK-12 Connect is not just a robust email campaign for your future and current families. It’s also a team of experts who build, deploy and optimize the campaign for you and then tie campaign performance to enrollment and retention outcomes to demonstrate a return on your investment.

ThinK-12 Connect was purposefully built to engage K-12 families with the goal of driving enrollment, engagement, and retention, while also building a sense of community. It uses the incredible program features in ThinK-12 Families to leverage increased parent engagement. It’s also the only program created and supported by education market experts.

ThinK-12 Connect is your custom communication engine. Today, families expect a professional stream of communication from every place they visit. They should expect the same from your school. With behavioral triggers that modify messaging based on family engagement (or lack of engagement), you can be sure that messaging to future and current families is relevant and service-oriented to help them make the best choices and to be your school’s ally.

Sponsorships

Not only will ThinK-12 Families drive your enrollment and retention, but it can also even generate sponsorship revenue for your school. Local service providers are already on your sport field fences; today they can reach your future and current families through ThinK-12 Families, giving them more reach and deeper connections. We even provide your school with a ThinK-12 Sponsorship Guide filled with ideas and strategies to attract sponsors to your program. To learn more about how to bring sponsors to your ThinK-12 program, click here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is family engagement?

Family engagement is one of the most important factors for a public school and school district that is driving total public school enrollment and retention. Family engagement keeps parents, students, and faculty connected through a variety of interactive tools. These tools can include chat features, consistent email campaigns, custom content, Q&A videos, a specialized family network, and a personalized staff directory. Traditional public schools often engage with families in outdated and ineffective ways, which is ultimately hurting public school enrollment. Family engagement with ThinK-12 is the way to change that.

Why are parents choosing public schools over private schools?

Parents send their children to a public school for a variety of reasons that includes building community, friendships, and experiences. When children attend public schools, they are learning alongside their neighbors and will therefore build a stronger connection with their community. Public schools are also often larger than private schools, providing children with a more diverse group of friends and environment at school. This gives families access to a more diverse student body and a wide variety of interests that ultimately create a unique environment for their child that might be difficult to replicate at a private school.

Additionally, their children will have numerous opportunities to join a large number of clubs and activities, which will help them to feel a deeper sense of belonging to their school.

Ultimately, public schools provide families with a community-based option that is just a few blocks from their homes. This makes it easy for families to make connections with other nearby parents and provide their children with rich, diverse experiences.

How can I attract more students to my school?

Declining enrollments are a significant issue for many public schools within the U.S. To increase enrollment at your public school, you can utilize several interactive tools provided by ThinK-12 in order to engage prospective families (as well as retain current families).