Community Development
Most independent schools do not have a captive clientele. They must establish credibility with the community they seek to serve. This requires cultivation of the support and respect of parents of children who are prospects for your school.
Parents are primarily interested in the calibre and
character of those who will be teaching their children. They care about the curriculum, the classroom
atmosphere, the safety of the school environment, and the level of discipline in
classrooms and on the buses. Parents
seek a supportive environment which complements their home and church.
Although none of these concerns relates to the school’s database system, Overseer Admin has a number of tools which can indirectly assist in the community development process, especially in managing communications between the school and its support community.
Prospect Tracking
In addition to enrolling students entering your school, Overseer permits tracking of prospects for future enrolment by recording their names, birthdates and family information in the database, and identifying them as prospects.
Children from families with expressed intent to enrol their children in your school can be tentatively enrolled months, or even years in advance of their anticipated first day of school.
Children from families with no stated commitment to your school can be tentatively enrolled in an “unknown” school as of their expected start date and grade level. In this way they will remain as prospects for a given grade level and school year until they actually choose a school.
Children attending another school can be recorded as enrolled in that school, by date and grade level, but remain as prospects for the local school.
Promotion
When the Promotion Committee is preparing for an open house, or for a promotional mailing to prospective families, detailed lists of known prospects will already be available within the database. A family address list, or family mailing labels may be generated for each division (e.g. by using the family filter “Families of prospects in division: Kindergarten”). Alternatively, a temporary group could be created called “Active Prospects”, all prospects could be automatically selected and placed in the group, then a family address list, or mailing labels, could be generated for all families of prospects using the filter “Families of children in group: Active Prospects”.
Projecting
Enrolment
By creating a new session (for the next school year) and making it the active session, an administrator may view the expected enrolment at every grade level, based on current enrolment data. Students who are currently enrolled will be assumed to progress to the next grade level unless explicitly designated as leaving or repeating a school year. This enables realistic advanced placement of students into classes and the projection of openings for new students in each grade level.
Fundraising
Mailings to families, adults and/or organizations within your support community can be sent selectively based upon their approved status for school mailings (i.e. no mail, essential mail only, include promotions, include fundraising). The choice of the correct constraints and filter can result in immediate printing of the appropriate mailing labels for the target audience.
Special
Events
Special events such as grandparents day, PTA meetings, school concerts etc. can be logged in your school calendar via Overseer.
Mailings for such events can be sent out with minimal effort. For example, if the grandparents of each student are captured within the school database, then prior to grandparents day, the families of all grandparents of students could be identified very quickly by creating a temporary group “Grandparents of students”, automatically placing all grandparents into the group, then using the family filter “Families of adults in group: Grandparents of students” to print mailing labels for all such families.
Summary
Timely, accurate mailings to the intended audience can ensure that the lines of communication are kept open, that the school respects the wishes of each family or organization with respect to the type of mail they are willing to receive, and nobody is forgotten.
