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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > November > 21 > Entry
Schools defend ad splurge
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
DAYTON — Dayton Public Schools has spent more than a half-million dollars in three years on television, radio, newspaper and billboard advertising.
The surge in ad spending — the district spent just $13,000 the year before the Kids First team won four seats, a majority of the seven-member school board — is being blamed on charter school competition. And even some of the board’s critics have no objection to the promotional push.
School officials say the amount spent is still just a fraction of the more than $200 million general fund budget. And they argue that advertising is nothing short of necessary in a district that is now one of the nation’s most competitive education markets, thanks to a flood of charter schools.
“It’s been forced upon us to compete for students,� school board President Gail Littlejohn said. “I get an ad for a charter school in the mail almost every week in the fall, and I don’t even have kids in school anymore.�
Selling the schools has even won the teachers’ union seal of approval.
“There’s no other way of showing the community we do want your child in Dayton Public Schools,� said Willie Terrell, president of the Dayton Education Association. “We have to do some- thing different.�
Dayton Public Schools spent $265,933 on advertising in the 2003-04 school year and $234,162 last year. So far this school year, the district has spent $98,129. The figures, which do not include publicity through direct mailings, were provided by the district at the request of the Dayton Daily News.
Television is the district’s preferred advertising venue. It spent $187,042 on TV ads in 2003-04 and $154,927 last year. Radio advertising cost the district $45,343 in 2003-04 and $56,164 last year. The district also spent $2,548 on ads with the Dayton Daily News in 2003-04 and $16,710 last year.
Jill Moberley, the district’s public information officer, said most of that spending has been concentrated in two areas: attendance and student recruiting.
The district is especially aggressive with advertising in advance of “count week,� the third week of October, during which the state uses attendance figures to determine enrollment. That enrollment figure is vital because the district receives state aid only for those students who attend during count week.
This fall, the district spent $55,938 on 1,150 TV and radio ads in the period before count week.
Moberley said the effort worked. During count week, the districtwide attendance rate was just under 96 percent, up from 93.39 percent on count week last year.
Moberley said school officials from other Miami Valley districts have thanked Superintendent Percy Mack for the ads because they believe the TV reminder boosted suburban attendance that week, too.
The district also saw a spike in truancy reports following its ads featuring a new truancy hot line for reporting students not in school, she said.
The final enrollment figure for Dayton, based on the October count, is still being rechecked, but the district expects to report enrollment of about 16,500.
That number should be about even with last year, an accomplishment for a district that’s been losing 1,000 kids or more each year to charters since 1999. Dayton’s public school system was helped significantly this year by the fact that no new charters opened for the first time in six years.
Charter schools are free public schools supported with tax dollars but run independently of the public school system by private operators.
Dayton is the nation’s top charter school market, with 22 percent of all schoolchildren attending 33 charter schools, all of which opened since 1998.
The district’s enrollment has plummeted by nearly 30 percent in that time, forcing 16 schools to close.
There are now more charters than the 28 traditional public schools in the Dayton district.
Moberley said the upswing in ad spending was partly fueled by a recommendation from the Council of Great City Schools, an organization of the largest urban school systems in the country. Three years ago, the council reviewed the district’s operations in a largely critical report.
“One of the recommendations was to increase our overall district activity and spending levels for promotional and community outreach,� she said. “Looking at Dayton, they saw the advent of charters and saw we were not doing a lot to compete with them at that time.�
Charter school competitors include national companies like National Heritage Academies, the nation’s biggest operator of charter schools. National Heritage uses billboards and mailings to promote its three Dayton schools.
And even locally-run charter schools, like the dropout-focused ISUS Trade and Tech Prep High School, use billboards and other high-profile ads promoting their schools.
Even critics of district spending, such as Terrell and newly elected school board member Joe Lacey, acknowledge the need to compete, even if it means buying more ads.
Lacey, who just defeated Kids First team member Doniece Gatliff in a campaign that emphasized a need for fiscal responsibility, said he would like to review the data on school advertising.
“I’d like to see if there is any evidence at all that (the ads) are bringing in kids,� Lacey said. “But if it does, then that is justifiable.�
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