3 Questions to Help You Build Trust with Parents
Fight a polar bear? Lift a car? Parents have and will go to the ends of the earth to keep their kids safe.
Every morning when parents send their child off to school, they are trusting you to keep them safe and healthy. But just over half of Americans say they trust local school administrators as they decide to reopen schools in fall 2021.
With millions of students missing from public schools across the U.S. this year, it will take a fresh approach to build trust with families.
To encourage parents and caregivers to enroll their students in your district this fall, answer these three questions before you start planning. (Psst, you can find all this smart thinking—and more—in our free student enrollment guide.)
Why have parents and caregivers not enrolled their students yet?
Parents have many legitimate questions and concerns about schooling right now, from virtual learning practices to health and safety concerns.
To understand what parents in your community are worried about:
Talk to principals and teachers about what they are hearing from parents.
Scan for sentiment on social media outlets like Facebook and NextDoor.
Call a sample of families to understand why they haven’t enrolled or have been absent.
At the same time, consider asking what they love about your district, since positive messaging can be more effective than negative.
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What are parent and caregiver values?
The messaging you used pre-pandemic won’t have the same effect.
Use what you know about why many parents haven’t enrolled their kids yet to build a plan that directly addresses the concerns they have right now. Develop messaging that builds relationships by showing parents and caregivers that your district understands their worries and upholds their values. For example, if your parents are most worried about safety, try a video that carefully explains the cleaning procedures your custodial staff members are using (we love this example from our friends at Chatham County Schools).
Where can you reach parents and caregivers?
Parents are busy and parents are distracted—you only have a few seconds to catch their attention.
Meet them where they are, with the information they care about most, delivered by those they trust. For example:
93% of parents trust their children’s teachers.
84% of people trust and take action based on word-of-mouth recommendations over other forms of advertising.
83% of mothers and 74% of fathers use social media to get useful information.
Want a little more help putting it all together? We’ve gathered even more research on the current student enrollment crisis and paired it with the communication planning formula we know works every time.
Check out Forthright’s free, step-by-step guide to help you create an evidence-backed communications plan to build trust with parents and boost your student enrollment.
We created this free tool to do our part in tackling dropping student enrollment numbers in public school districts. We hope it’s useful far and wide—please share with a district who you think may need it.
