At Farmington Schools, it's a Little More Talk, and a Little More Action

Director of School and Community Relations Diane Bauman admitted she was a little nervous as she went about the task of starting the ' Facebook and Twitter pages this year.

The thing about social media is that she would be inviting people to share comments, and to be honest, she said, she wasn’t quite sure what they would say. Bauman learned, during the big “snowstorm that wasn’t” early this year.

The metro area was expecting huge snow accumulations, and the snow started to fall, and fall really fast, at 3 a.m. By 4 a.m., Supt. Susan Zurvalec made the call to cancel classes for the day.

By the time school would have started that day, the snowfall petered out. Accumulations were tame until the following week, when the area saw a huge snowfall that legitimately trapped people in their neighborhoods and kept them from venturing out to work.

But on the day of the weather non-event, the district Facebook page was abuzz with people commenting about how it was outrageous to call off classes for such a mild storm.

Before Bauman could reply that the district has to put safety first and every meteorologist in the area was calling for a storm that could cripple the region for days, a wonderful thing happened – other visitors to the district’s page did it for her.

“They shared correct information and really sort of balanced out the conversation,” she said.

It’s not the last time that has happened, she said after making a presentation to the Farmington Public Schools Board of Education. The presentation was an update on district communications, something Bauman takes seriously.

Social media, she learned this year, offers a great way to quickly share information with the community, and to be sure that readers have correct information.

Among other successful communications programs is the district’s listserv, which sent out 144 messages to subscribers during this school year. Each of the schools also sends listserv messages; in total, 2,744 messages went out during this school year. 

Additionally, the schools’ websites enjoy high traffic, Bauman said, as does the district’s website. 

Another favorite is TV 10, which records and airs board meetings, school events and sporting events. At the end of the school year, with the retirement of Dean and Sue Cobb, who coordinated TV 10, its future was uncertain.

But Bauman said, “There was such a strong interest this could not go away,” and the program will be spared from the chopping block, even if aging equipment means that some funding is going to be necessary fairly soon.

The district may explore funding for that at the same time it explores the necessary equipment to offer video on demand and live streaming video on the district’s website, which Bauman hopes will be up and running very soon.

“There has been a lot of demand for that,” she said.

Parent involvement has been crucial in successfully communicating with the public, she said. This year, when Gov. Rick Snyder rolled out his proposed budget that included cuts to public K-12 education, a parent and community group, Hold Onto Public Education (or HOPE) quickly formed, and in mid-May held a well-attended public town hall forum in Walled Lake, to send a message to Lansing that the cuts were not popular.

“It was very encouraging that people came out and shared their opinions,” Bauman said.

One new program the district has started this year is a potential revenue producer, she added.

Officials have begun working with Alternative Revenue Development, which places banner advertisements on the district’s website.

“They have such tasteful ads,” Bauman said. “Nobody likes the idea of advertising in the schools … But theirs don’t even look like advertisements.”

The ads are such a good fit that the district’s website may become a pilot site for an e-commerce portal, she said, adding that some districts have been able to collect as much as $10,000 per year for providing advertising space on their sites.

But communication isn’t a one-way street, and Bauman said the district is working with Cobalt Communications to prepare and send out a survey for parents and the community this year.