Districts Contemplating the End of Competitive Advertisements

The eleven school boards in Lenawee County will be working together over a period of the next few weeks to determine whether or not they should agree to a particular compact which will prevent them from advertising to draw schools of choice students from the other districts.

This agreement would be a pilot that would serve all of the districts for one year. This would end the schools of choice from advertising unless they each agree on joint advertising, which would need to include all eleven of the districts. At a recent meeting, the superintendents agreed that they would take the agreement back to their board for more consideration.

The enrollment of students in public schools continues to shrink which has led a lot of the different schools in the district to become very competitive against one another in order to get students to come to their schools instead. Many of the schools have been competing aggressively as a means of luring students from other areas to come to their school instead. Many of the districts have had enough with this and would like to put a stop to the competitive advertisement but they want all of the eleven districts in the County to go along with such agreements.

Jim Hartley, the Superintendent at Madison, has said, “I think people are really getting sick of the advertising we’ve been doing.” The district of Madison was one of the schools that had been advertising for the school of choice students during the summer, as a means of getting more students to attend the particular school.

The Superintendent at Adrian, Chris Timmis, has said, “In order for us to work together, we have to stop some of the silliness that took place last summer with the advertising, and it’s a good first step.” The Adrian district also advertised during the summer to reach out to potential students.

With such an agreement in place, not all of the individual advertising would be eliminated. Districts would obviously still need to promote certain events and functions that their school will be holding. Aside from this, Hartley says that the Madison district will not be printing out any new yard signs while under such an agreement but they also plan on giving away the yard signs that they already have printed.

Timmis says that Hudson, Clinton, Madison, and Onsted schools boards came to an agreement on Thursday. Timmis has recommended the agreement for his district, Adrian. The meeting will be held at Adrian High School on the 23^rd of January. If all agree, it will go into action on July 1^st.

Four of the different districts have even agreed that they will no longer target one another with advertising campaigns. These four districts are even working on becoming closer with one another.