District Branching Out On Facebook

— The School District is exploring ways of promoting itself through social media, billboards and partnerships with local businesses.

The district intends to expand on its social media outreach by launching a Spanish-version Facebook site early next week, said Rick Schaeffer, communications director.

The district’s English-version Facebook site has been active since September 2009. Since then it has garnered “likes” from more than 7,000 Facebook users.

By The Numbers

Facebook Likes

Number of “likes” for each school district’s Facebook page, as of Friday:

• Springdale: 7,262

• Bentonville: 5,861

• Fayetteville: 4,863

• Rogers: 3,606

Source: Staff Report

The district regularly posts news related to students and student activities on its Facebook site.

About 43 percent of the district’s students are Hispanic. The new Facebook site is intended to appeal primarily to the Spanish-speaking parents of students.

Al Lopez, also known as Papa Rap, a community school liaison for the district, said no matter what language parents speak, they’re all interested in their children. The Spanish Facebook site is a way to get them involved.

“It’s a wonderful thing, especially when we are trying to find as many ways to communicate with parents as possible,” Lopez said.

District officials also intend to establish a site on Instagram, a photo-sharing network.

Another communications initiative involves digital billboards.

The district posted messages on digital billboards for the first time during most of September. Another set of messages is set to appear on three digital billboards in Springdale for four weeks starting Oct. 22.

The billboards are on South Thompson Street in front of the Springdale Bowling Center, on North Thompson Street near the intersection with Randall Wobbe Lane, and on Sunset Avenue and Robinson Avenue.

“Those are heavy traffic areas,” Schaeffer said.

The billboards maintain eight messages at a time, rotating once every seven seconds. That means the district’s message will appear at least once per minute on each billboard. The message and the graphic will change every week, Schaeffer said.

The district is paying $1,350 for this four-week contract of billboard advertising.

Springdale schools will gain additional exposure through some local businesses. Advertisements promoting the schools occasionally will appear on television screens installed inside the businesses. In turn, television screens inside the district’s high schools will flash advertisements for those businesses in between various school-related announcements. The school district’s messages will be controlled by its communications department.

Meanwhile, Jordan Godfrey, assistant communications director, is setting up a blogging network among parents in the district. The idea is to get at least one parent representing each school to write occasionally about something going on in their respective buildings.

“They’re not going to have a huge commitment,” Godfrey said. “They probably won’t be blogging more than once, twice, three times a semester.”

Parents would send what they write to the district, which would handle the technical aspects of posting their text.

Any parents interested in participating should call Godfrey at 479-200-9403.

“The more parents who want to get involved, the merrier,” she said.

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