Show Notes: 

Read the full article: School Shoutout: Sliding into Success. 

Learn more about us and subscribe to our school marketing newsletter at schoolceo.com. If you have a story you’d like to share with the SchoolCEO team, email me at eileen@schoolceo.com or schedule a call with me! 

Follow SchoolCEO on LinkedIn or X/Twitter @school_ceo. 

SchoolCEO is powered by Apptegy, the maker of the leading K-12 communications and brand management platform.

Episode Transcript:

Hi everyone, welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. In the last episode, we shared a SWOT analysis of every school communications department in the country and determined you all have one big strength in common: you have so many amazing stories to tell—big and small. Today we're sliding into a story about how one Georgia elementary school literally built excitement—and a pretty great enrollment marketing tool—into its design. 

Picture this: It's the first day of school at Cottrell Elementary in Lumpkin County, Georgia. Students arrive to discover their brand new school building has a lot more than a functioning HVAC system, unlike the building it replaced, it has something that really matters to them, something extraordinary—a two-story, bright purple slide that starts near the classrooms and ends—inside the school library! At the bottom sits Superintendent Dr. Rob Brown, watching as student after student comes whooshing down with delighted faces. Brown, who retired in December 2023 after eight years with the district, called it one of the best days of his entire career. 

When planning the new school, Brown's team wanted to design a space specifically for children—bright, colorful, with the district's signature purple accents throughout. They also wanted it to support the district’s plans to bolster their overall enrollment growth over the next decade. 

As a former PE teacher, Brown knew firsthand how important movement is for elementary students. And given the national decline in literacy rates post-pandemic, depositing kids in the library was an ingenious idea to kill two birds with one slide: letting kids get the wiggles out while encouraging reading. 

Here’s why this slide is also an ingenious marketing tool. It quickly became the pride of Lumpkin County. Now, one local employer includes pictures of Cottrell Elementary in recruitment materials for out-of-state prospects with children. When families tour Cottrell Elementary School, they see the distinct purple slide and it is clear that their children will not only learn there, but thrive. 

Look, you might not have a 2-story indoor slide, but I’ll bet you have an outdoor one. You have kids talking animatedly at the lunch table. You have all these moments with smiling and happy students, but do you have a video of them on your website enrollment page? These videos let prospective families imagine their kids in your schools, smiling and happy, too. They let parents imagine their kids BELONGING. You can show those videos on social media, too. 

Actually, you can even create your own b-roll of smiling, happy kids for media outlets to use when they cover something happening at your schools. A lot of news organizations are understaffed and might appreciate it. And it helps you shape the narrative around your schools— far and wide enough it could attract some new faces. 

This story originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of SchoolCEO Magazine in an article written by Brittany Edwardes Keil. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Thanks for joining me. Talk soon.