Enrollment and Marketing of Charter vs. Public
I believe we are losing the battle in marketing the Cambridge Public Schools as a viable choice for Cambridge parents. As I work events, especially community health fairs, I notice that charter schools are reaching out to families and their children, communicating all that they have to offer. The Cambridge Public Schools should do the same. We have a great number of offerings and a diversity in programming that should allot any family in Cambridge a desirable choice for their children.
We need to be more aggressive in marketing our system as a viable option and create a recruitment plan to reach families and children with the variety of options and opportunities that the full system has to offer.
Although we are seeing an increase in enrollment it was only a short while ago that we lost 1000 students. We cannot be complacent, we need to sell ourselves and recruit to make sure that we are doing as much as our competitors to market our schools. We need also to conduct exit interviews to ascertain if there are any patterns for why students are leaving and create a plan to address them.
