With enrollment having declined by 2,000 students since the 2024-2025 school year, Lee County Schools has embarked on a marketing campaign. <\/p>\n
At a school board workshop this week, communications spokesman Rob Spicker outlined the department\u2019s recent and future tactics.<\/p>\n
“One of the things that we’re doing this school year is going to be all about student enrollment,” he said. “It’s going to be a constant theme through the school year, both in terms of retaining the students we have and recruiting students that we don’t have in the district.<\/p>\n
“The school funding [is] tied obviously directly to the enrollment number, the number of students on campus.”<\/p>\n
Public schools around the state have increasingly lost students to private, charter and home schooling, particularly with the expansion of voucher availability, which made virtually every family eligible for about $8,000 per child to attend a non-public school.<\/p>\n
“We’re in a position now where we have to constantly be marketing ourselves to our community, to our parents, to bring them into our schools.”<\/p>\n
The communications department has created a new home page, to \u201creally sell ourselves as a district to those parents who are coming into Lee County,\u201d Spicker said. It includes a highlight reel, access to parent and employee portals, a message from the superintendent, and most notably, multiple opportunities to enroll. Additional social media plans were announced.<\/p>\n
Last year, letters and postcards went to all registered voters in an enrollment campaign. The approximate $65,000 cost drew criticism from the community. When board member Melisa Giovannelli asked, Spicker said there were no plans to send additional letters.<\/p>\n