Sports Information in a public school district

I've actually considered doing this as a club -- essentially training students to be the SIDs, much like is done at a college with the nonrevenue sports -- at the school where I teach. It's an area in which I have some expertise and would give kids a potential career path.

Problem is, I still have a byline in the local paper (on occasion) and own an independent broadcast company that airs the school's games (and some other area schools), so I always saw that as a conflict of interest -- my (independent) journalistic side career intertwining with my teaching career.

 

They do. They just don't handle pr for extracurriculars.

Hell, DISD has a five-person staff just handling athletics but none of them do any PR work.

 

Now that you say that, the ones around here are involved in non-sports extracurriculars. Nothing for sports here, either.

 

It also helps DeKalb to have an information guy who knows our business. Mark Brock once worked for the Ole Miss sports information department. He's also the former sports editor of a weekly paper and did a lot of stringing for daily papers. Mark's a good guy as well.

As for public information officers, most districts I'm familiar with use an IT flunky, a former teacher or an administrative assistant in that role. Rarely do you see a person with actual media experience. A former coworker of mine, who was a fine reporter when she worked for us, is now the public info officer for a surburban school district. In less than a year she overhauled the district's Web site to make it more informative for parents, the media and the general public.

The county where I live has two separate school districts - city and county - with information officers. The city district has a former teacher in the public info position, and her duties are geared toward academics and promoting the school district's agenda in the community. The high school has been recognized as the state's best all-around athletic program, yet it has no central Web site or contact person for sports information and stats.

The Web site built by my friend, the ex-reporter-turned-school public info officer, kicks the butt of our city district's site.

The county school district, which has three high schools, has the "administrative assistant" who does this job in addition to his other duties in the central office. This is a district that rarely updates its Web site. Apparently, one of his duties is asking the media to do his work - which is what I'll be doing today when I take a photo of the county's honor grads for the district web site. He says his camera isn't good enough. I'm doing it as a favor since my daughter is a graduate of one of the county schools and the district has gone beyond the call of duty over the years to accommodate her with large-print textbooks because of her vision. I'm also using this moment to remind the district adminstrators that if they ever need a new public information officer, I'm their man.

 

Our public information officer is a former teacher who takes days to respond to an email or a phone call.

She also will scream about "all the negative stories" the newspaper writes and takes an us vs. them stance.

We had a graduation last year, on a Saturday mind you, that a local yokel deputy assistant second cousin fire marshall wrongly closed the doors on because he thought it was too crowded in the gym. Well one of the people he locked out was a soldier who had come home from Iraq to see his daughter graduate. Well, he didn't see her graduate.

The school beat reporter catches wind of this, but the only way to reach the PIO, since she does not have a cell phone, is to wait until she comes to work on Monday morning. She did not get back to the reporter until Tuesday afternoon and the story ran Wednesday for an event that happened on Saturday.

Our PIO makes over $80,000 a year mind you. She does do a nice charity golf tournament and retirement dinner.

 

Good feedback on here.

There is a PIO in this district but she doesn't do anything with sports. They just cut about $10M and 108 teachers from next year's budget. So an SID position, I'd guess, is out of the question. It's unfortunate because there's a niche and need for it in this metro district that features over 32K students.

 

But, and Moddy needs to jump on this thread, there is room for the ADs to be trained.

Sure a district is not going to take on a new position, but they can hire someone out at $50 an hour to train their ADs. That is the stuff the public never notices. wink, wink

 

Yeah, I certainly hear your point about budgets. Around here, there is serious discussion about dropping certain sports next year, simply because there isn't enough money to pay to for them. Or start charging user fees.

If a district hires a PR person, that person is going to have to do far more than update football and basketball stats on the web site. That will be just a drop in the bucket, in terms of the overall PR duties. I can see hiring someone as a media/image consultant, not as a statistician to make sportswriters' jobs easier. The more I think about it, I'm surprised that even universities do this.

And whomever was charged with that task would have a thankless job. I'm surprised at how many coaches don't even have someone keeping stats. Maybe it's we who have had our priorities out of whack for too long.

 

Dammit! Another idea I thought I thought of all on my own. I hope to pitch this to the area schools this summer. I'll let you know how I do.

 

Please do. I'll be waiting to hear how it is received.

 

Agreed. Keep us posted. I'm thinking about putting something together. God, I hate my newspaper job.

 

Why does this only happen to soldiers in Iraq who come back to see their daughter graduate? And why couldn't the reporter call the fire marshal instead of relying on the PIO?