CO Charter Student Recruitment

February 26, 2015

Agenda

• Strategic Drivers – Why Parents Choose

• The Yardstick Process• Enrollment Strategies• Customer Service• Who's Involved?• Eat, Sleep, Play & Worship

Why Parent

s Choos

e

Smaller Class Sizes

Better Education

Safety

Transportation

Extra Curricular Activities

Academic Performance

There are a number of different factors that contribute to a parent’s rationale for choosing a Charter School. A few of them are outlined below.

Parents often believe in the importance of focused individual attention to their children that can only come from a school with a low student to teacher ratio.

According to the Friedmont Foundation in Nov. 2013, 81.3% of parents choose a private school because they believe it offers a better education than their public school options.

Transportation is a driver for parental choice. This creates a heightened priority considering that many charters don't offer transportation.

In the midst of budget cuts, school closures, and Common Core many schools have limited or eliminated extracurricular activities which provides a tremendous opportunity for all Charter Schools.

Parents value Safety over almost all else as they seek to ensure that a school provides a safe learning environment for their most precious cargo.

Academic performance is critical to student recruitment and Charter Schools can customize an enrollment campaign to specific content areas and grade levels of their greatest enrollment needs.

Strategic Drivers

The Yardstick ProcessOur hands-on recruitment process celebrates the uniqueness of each school in order to sustain strong enrollment.

Competitive Benchmarking

Ambassador Recruitment

Targeted Outreach

Track, Assess, Revise

• Competitive Benchmarking: At the onset of the project, the Yardstick team partners with schools to collect as much information as possible on the schools most competitive with their schools. We then define a targeted list of most vulnerable competitors and listed every venue for potential student capture (Cheat Sheet)

• Ambassador Recruitment: The next phase of the project is to collaborate with school leaders and their recruitment teams to select organizations that have the most frequent interactions with families in order to recruit their leaders to serve as ambassadors throughout the community on behalf of each schools.

• Targeted Outreach: In addition to attracting families via strategic partnerships, we also outline enrollment projections for all upcoming community events and target our outreach based on greatest potential outcomes.

• Track, Assess, Revise: The cheat sheet's projections are then compared to actuals and reviewed throughout our engagement to assess effectiveness and determine alternative strategies.

Enrollment Strategies: Targeted Outreach

Successful enrollment campaigns begin with a clear articulation of goals followed by an implementation strategy that drives the specific tactics.

Recruitment Effectiveness Assessment

Differentiation Indicators

Parent Facing Representativ

es – WHO?

Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship,

Community

• Event Effectiveness Assessment: We will walk you through simple formulas to calculate your weekly enrollment targets and the effectiveness of enrollment events so that you have a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

• Differentiation Indicators: Based on your individual school’s enrollment, charter schools must understand who is your school’s competition as well is how your school differentiates itself from your competition.

• Parent Facing Representatives – Who?: Anyone in direct connection with parents and potential parents is a key driver of an effective enrollment team. Administrative Assistants and school personnel selected to attend outreach events need to be carefully vetted and trained prior to interacting with any potential parents.

• Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship, Community: This deck outlines engagement strategies to target each of these five outlets to decision makers in your school community.

Calculating Weekly Enrollment Targets

A highly effective enrollment campaign needs to be managed with quantitative enrollment objectives. The below formula helps to calculate your weekly targets and needs to be revisited each week as the target number can compound and/or shrink depending on your enrollment success:

1.Current enrollment minus students loss to graduation = Remaining Enrollment2.Based on historical data, calculate an average re-enrollment rate3.Re-enrollment rate multiplied by remaining enrollment = Actual Enrollment4.Total Capacity minus Actual Enrollment = Number of New Students Needed5.Number of New Students Needed multiplied by historic shrinkage (Shrinkage is the percent of student that enroll that actually convert into students) = the True Number of students needed to recruit6.True Number of students needed to recruit divided by the number of weeks left in your recruitment cycle = Weekly Recruitment Target

Recruitment Event Effectiveness Assessment

Given the limited time available to maximize student enrollment, it’s important that each event attended/launch yields your desired return. The below ratios will help you measure the effectiveness of your recruitment events.

1.Number of Events : Attendees2.Attendees : Leads3.Leads : Students

Each school must develop a list of events to attend where valuable human capital will spend a considerable amount of time attempting to recruit students. Prior to attending an event, we must address the following questions:

4.How many people will attend the event?5.How many of those people are potential parents and/or school ambassadors?6.How many students does each potential parent and/or ambassador yield for my school?

What Differentiates Your School?

• Data collection and analyses of who your competition is and what they do different is one of the most important factors in a successful enrollment campaign.

• What are the top 5 schools by GRADE level that your new students come from? What are the most common reasons? Answers to these questions are KEY to your individual pitch.

• See attached “Cheat Sheet” as an example of data to be collected on your competitor schools.

• This spreadsheet should be kept both electronically and on every administrator and administrative assistant’s desktop as well as printed out next to the phone of anyone who handles any student enrollment inquiries.

Competitive Benchmarking

Review of Cheat Sheet and Venue List

School Specific Script

• Greeting:– Good morning this is…??– Thank you for calling…??– It's a great day at…??

• School Talking Points:– Recent awards?– Extra Curricular?– Community Partners?– Student Demographics?– School days/hrs?– Curriculum?– Other??

Customer Service: Role PlaySchools only have one chance to make a first impression on a potential enrollee and therefore, careful attention to detail with any customer interaction will dictate the success of any enrollment efforts. Important factors include:Phone Calls:•Number of Rings – All calls should be answered within 3 rings.•Anyone who answers the phone should be well versed in ALL things enrollment related and know where to find the cheat sheet. It’s important that any alternate/back up person is well versed in customer service and school specifics.•In addition to responding clearly and concisely to parental questions, the school representative should PROACTIVELY highlight important points that differentiates the school from all local competitors celebrating the school’s success.•Never hang up without recording name and contact info of parent as well as all student info•Let's call your school and 1-2 competitors to better understand the customer interaction in real time.In Person:•Front office aesthetics – Desks should be clear of clutter and debris.•Representatives should be pleasant and greet parents accordingly.•Attire – Look the part of an outstanding institution of learning.•Wait time – If administrator is unavailable, front office staff should be able to answer all general questions as to minimize wait time for potential parents seeking additional information.

WHO? - Characteristics of Effective Recruiters – YOU!

• Behavioral Characteristics:– Extrovert – It’s imperative that your lead recruiters are

EXCITED about speaking to others about your school.– Believers – Your recruiters must go beyond that of a

traditional employee and genuinely believe in your efforts and exhibit passion about sharing this with the world.

– Influencers - Well regarded in the school and local community. e.g. Long family history in the neighborhood, Relationship w/ local business owners/pastors/community leaders

– Presence – Intangible presence that commands the respect of everyone (s)he encounters

– Knowledgeable/Historian – Understands school/community’s historical challenges and can clearly articulate improvements as a result of your school's presence

Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship

• Build relationships where students EAT:– Grocery Stores – free banners in stores– Convenience Stores – employees become school

ambassador(s)– Fast Food Restaurants – e.g. every pizza delivered

includes a school flier, same with every combo meal– Partner w/ local caterers

Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship

• Build Relationships where students SLEEP:– What school based employees live in the neighborhood?

Incentivize them with time off, awards, etc. to recruit a specific number of students per employee

– Neighborhood watch club sponsorships– Target cafeteria workers, security guards, and custodians

to serve as ambassadors in their daily lives in the community.

Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship

• Build Relationships where students PLAY:– Pop warner league– YMCA– Recreation Centers– Church leagues– Police Athletic Leagues– Private clubs

Eat, Sleep, Play, Worship

• Build Relationships where students Worship:– Leaders from the Faith-Based community become

Ambassadors– Mention in weekly announcements– School designee speaks on behalf of school at

church/synagogue/mosque/etc.