The Chandler Unified School District in Arizona is using a mix of social media and traditional direct mail to attract young parents to the public education system.

“We’re trying to appeal to the younger parent with four- and five-year olds who are shopping for schools,” says district spokesman Terry Locke. “That generation is definitely using Facebook and Twitter and they’re not buying newspapers anymore.”

To supplement those efforts, about 68,000 self-mailers were sent to homes throughout the district’s more than 70 square-mile boundaries in May. The $10,000 campaign was the largest of its kind the district has ever done.

“Typically. in the past we’ve done a little more marketing in [the parts of] our communities that are in a declining enrollment mode,” he says. “We’ve had to work really hard to maintain our student populations so that we don’t have to cut programs,” he says. “We had focused on southern [region] but this time did the entire district.”

The response rate to such efforts is difficult to gauge, notes Locke. “We get a varied range of follow-up, from parents showing up at a neighborhood school to register their children to calls to the superintendent for more information to families deciding to continue at their [current public] school instead of choosing a competitor.”

Aside from direct mail, social media and the main website (http://ww2.chandler.k12.az.us, the district has tried newspaper advertising and even spots in local movie theaters to promote the schools. While direct mail is limited to residents of the district near the Phoenix airport, the newspaper and movie ads have a more regional appeal.

Many efforts are timed to when kindergarten registration opens. “We want to bring those families in and keep them for 13 years,” Locke says.

But why does a public school have to market itself in the first place?

“The state established a very liberal open enrollment policy, meaning that if there’s room for a child in a school it really doesn’t matter where you live,” says Locke.

“Parents have the choice of where they send their kids—whether it’s the neighborhood school, a different school in the same district, charter schools or private schools. So we have to market our product.”

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