Beyond Billboards: Data-Driven Marketing That Works for Districts

This podcast episode features host Tom Greer in conversation with Tracy Ginsburg and Ronna Johnson, founder/CEO of edVantage Strategic Group, about the changing enrollment and funding landscape for Texas public school districts—and why “marketing” is becoming a necessary strategic function rather than an optional communications expense. 

The guests emphasize that districts are operating in a more competitive environment (charters, private, homeschool, virtual options, inter-district transfers) alongside demographic headwinds such as declining birth rates and persistent financial pressure. As a result, districts must treat enrollment and reputation as measurable, board-aligned priorities.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And so the the option to talk about uh student recruitment and even teacher recruitment is no longer an option. It's it's going to be a necessity.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

That is Ronna Johnson, founder CEO of Advantage, a public relations firm specializing in public education. It's part of the conversation we'll have in today's episode, which also features TASBO executive director, Tracy Ginsburg. We talk about the changing enrollment and funding landscape for Texas public schools and why marketing is becoming a necessary strategic function rather than an optional communications expense. We're proud to have Advantage as a TASBO business sponsor here on TASBOCast. I'm your host, Tom Greer. All right, I'm here with Tracy Ginsburg and Ronna Johnson, founder and CEO of our business sponsor, Advantage. Before we begin, Ronna, why don't you give us an elevator speech about you and your company?

About edVantage

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Thanks, Tom. I'm really excited to be here today. Advantage was formed uh over 15 years ago. We're actually celebrating our 15-year birthday this year. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. I saw myself as a community member in Georgetown in the work that I was asked to do as a parent, serving on various committees for strategic planning, um bond elections, and those kind of things, that the community could really be a big part of what happens in the future of their students and children. And so uh it really led me to form this company 2016. I believe we we really branched out in a bigger way, but we were formed in 2011. Since then, we've worked in over 200 communities across the state, just helping school districts uh with marketing and media. And uh, we're happy today to be serving uh districts everywhere in Texas.

Public Ed Success Stories

SPEAKER_00 2:05

We appreciate you being on with us. Um, before we start with the uh discussion on marketing investments in school districts, let's start with what is working very well, some very, very positive stories uh about public education. Uh Tracy?

SPEAKER_03 2:23

I uh had the privilege of serving as an evaluator on the HEV Excellence in Education Awards. And I've spent the last couple of months touring districts from every corner of Texas, in all honesty. And it reminded me of my why. Uh we have such engaging uh educators in our classrooms, uh implementing all sorts of new methods, uh, because you know, our let's face it, uh kids don't learn like I used to learn because uh you know, time has changed. And you had we talked before the podcast, I have a birthday coming up, and it's been a long time since I was in uh middle school or high school. And so um there's some great education going on and terrific programs. And uh we've kind of gone full circle. Uh we, you know, the requirements for college, career, and military readiness that were implemented by the legislature. I don't know, Rona, how many years ago has that been?

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Well, House Bill that uh House Bill 5, so 2013.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Yeah, it's been so long. Uh not not very long in the overall schema things that we have really focused on that. And but kids are leaving our high schools with certificates and walking into jobs that pay them a very strong wage, whether it be uh in computer uh engineering, uh, you know, in computer engineering LVNs, I've watched students practice their phlebotomy skills on a patient teacher. I watched her be stuck three times by students in a row, which you know, I don't like to get my blood drawn on a good day. But our educators are stepping up and stepping out, and we have so many terrific programs, but they don't just start in high school. Uh, I've seen uh I've walked through middle schools where students are leaving middle school with multiple credits, multiple high school credits, so that they can expand their horizons once they walk through the door. A large number of our high school graduates leave with an associate's degree. Uh they walk into college as a junior. And that doesn't happen without great education that begins down at the elementary level. I have a grandson in midway ISD, and uh I am always amazed at how things have changed and how quickly he is learning and how quickly he is advancing. And I know that his opportunities once he gets to high school, I can't even imagine what will happen in the next 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Sky's the limit.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Sky's the limit.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Okay, Rana, and anything comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Well, for us, we're we're really lucky to get to work in really large urban districts and you know, the major urban areas in Texas, but we also get to work in bond elections uh out in the rural parts of Texas. And it's just been, as Tracy said, it's so inspiring and even amazing. Um, how they're adapting and building in two career technology facilities that really are either locally appropriate, things that their local economies need or responding to local industry, or they're building into, as Tracy talked about, career pathways for either going directly into the workplace or into the military. And these facilities are not the vote type facilities that you know some of us may remember from high school. And by the way, happy birthday, Tracy. These are amazing current labs where students are getting these hands-on real-world training and they're able to come out either with those certifications and a lot of these stories that students are telling us is that they're even taking uh time in high school to learn these skills so that they have jobs and income coming in while they're in college so that they can be a welder or they can have a backup, you know, a career so that they can can pay to pay for their way through school and be able to do that. So it is remarkable how our our local public schools are really the pipeline for workforce of the Texas economy and the future for all of us.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

And I've been amazed at the partnerships with businesses that have really stepped forward, the various hospitals uh that afford partnerships with that uh medical pathway. But also, I was just recently in a district where the local auto dealer didn't have, couldn't hire auto mechanics. And they had brought them brand new vehicles to work on so they could learn that new technology. I remember Auto Tech when I was a CFO that I didn't want to go too far into the Auto Tech shop because it was dirty and nasty and there was a bunch of food in there. That's not the Auto Tech today. The floors, it looks just like when you take your car to your local dealer to be serviced. That's what our shops look like, and that's where our students are learning.

Invest in Marketing to Better Compete

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Well, you guys are talking about the future, and it the future is now. Public schools are in an increasingly competitive environment. And so there really needs to be a sea change in how public schools attract and retain students. Rana, you're here to help districts plan and implement marketing investments, uh, just like what you'd see in businesses. What can you tell public schools and CFOs on responsible ways to invest in marketing for the school district?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Well, how much time do we have, Tom? Well, the first thing I would say is uh in the past, uh, you know, your enrollment was defined by your your uh your your geographic boundary and the demographics of that boundary, the feeder pattern of your school district and your your different neighborhoods and the birth rates. And we know today that that those things are long in the past, that your enrollment today is really based on values, it's based on programs and experiences, and it is going to be much more um fluid that where before, where you might have had in a rural district maybe another private school or homeschool option. Now those options are expanding. And so I think what all public schools are looking at is becoming more corporate in their thinking and not just re-examining their brand. I think they're they've been aware of their brand, their brand presence, the physical brand, the state of their buildings, those kind of the state of their facilities. And they've definitely understood that you know that brand translates into enrollment. But now, in terms of a competitive environment where they're not only competing with charters, private, and homeschool options, they're now directly competing with most of them, if they've got open enrollment, uh taking transfers and competing with neighboring school districts or or public school districts that are virtual across the state. And so the the option to talk about student recruitment and even teacher recruitment is no longer an option. It's going to be a necessity.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Absolutely. Um it's a totally different landscape. I remember when I served as CFO at Round Rock, we had closed borders uh and we became chapter, what was then chapter 41, we became a a wealthy district and we decided to open our schools. And I mean, it was a hard discussion uh at the board level to uh let transfer students in. But today students move across Texas very f very fluidly and uh they don't think twice about leaving one district and going to another. You know, it's a different it's a different game.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

So where where to start? You know, if you're just a district doing the same things, what's a good way to begin this pro a process and how are you gonna invest your money wisely?

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Well, I think it's a CFO, and I don't let Rhonda tell us how to how to spend it, but I think you need to look at your history and figure out to the greatest degree that you can where your kids are going, where the pockets are that you're losing. Because you may have a you may have an isolated issue. I doubt it. But you know, I I'd want to know, I'd want to look back over 10 years and watch this which students have left the district and which ones have chosen to transfer in. But I'd want uh in the olden days, and I say olden days solidly, uh, you you look more at the district level. You're gonna have to get down to granular, you have to get down to grade level and campus and figure out or try to identify why. You will without some help from someone who can do some uh deep analysis like Advantage Can.

Filling Seats

Budget and Marketing

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Well, I think you know that's a a great segue because the the most obvious uh place to start is do we have are all of our seats full? So uh there are some districts uh that are still growing that that have the opposite problem. They're still, you know, trying to build into buildings and make sure that they have uh seats for students that are coming. But most of our districts are facing the opposite. And that isn't just because of increased competition. There's been a historical drop in birth rate that is continuing. It's that that trend is not gonna change. There's also, you know, some new policy, and it's it's maybe the enforcement of that policy has has kept some of our students from coming back to school. And so we've seen kind of a collision, if you will, of a perfect storm of uh lack of funding for a lot of districts for six years in a row, um, some empty seats in the district. And so it's really caused them to stop and and do that accounting that you're talking about and not just uh looking at their their enrollment as a total, but really starting to dig into where where do we see these empty seats? And so one of the things that the easiest way to look at this is uh I think we're all pretty familiar with the formula for the revenue of a full seat. So when we have 100% of our functional capacity and we're full as a district, this is what we can expect our revenue to be. It's when we have empty seats that we have to start to determine what the formula is to calculate an empty seat. And I think, you know, one of the things that I'll talk about in a moment, but uh from as being a former board member myself, one of the things that you have to look at as a board is that balance of stewardship between how how many empty seats can we afford to keep versus at what point do we decide to invest from a marketing standpoint in filling those seats, or uh honestly getting rid of those seats? So do we, do we, you know, do we look at that enrollment as Tracy said by campus, by grade level, look at things like consolidations and unfortunately sometimes school closures. Is that a way to eliminate um empty seats and kind of right size our district? Or do we want to say, hey, we have these empty seats, they're prime real estate, they're located along major roadways, or we have programs in these campuses that could be appealing. And that's when we start to determine, okay, we think we want to keep those empty seats, but we want to invest in filling them. And that's where we move to a different formula called the cost of acquisition. And that's really kind of what we're focusing on today is this aspect of uh balancing that revenue and these costs of either keeping the empty seat, losing the empty seat, or filling the empty seat. So, in terms of places to start, Tom, you kind of asked about that. I think, you know, from the sitting from the CFO seat uh and working with districts, one of the things that we see is that there's a a really high interest right now in investing in what people are calling marketing. But what they don't really understand is the marketing is actually just the the plan and the strategy to deliver messages to audiences. I mean, that's that's really what marketing is. And so the first thing we really need is a plan and a strategy. And we're seeing a lot of districts who are just kind of running off at every direction and saying, okay, well, we're gonna throw a certain amount of money at this or a certain amount of money per month. But it's really a better idea to step back and say, okay, let's examine to Tracy's point, where do these empty seats live? How do we want to address them? And then for the ones that you determine that you want to fill, now we start to develop a plan and a strategy. And it's not just a one-year strategy. The great thing about this conversation we're having right now is it nicely coincides with the budget workshop period and the budget planning season for uh board of trustees. So it's it's a good time to build that plan and say, this is how we're gonna deal with uh reputation management and brand awareness as a district, which is one type of marketing plan and strategy. This is how we're gonna deal with enrollment. And we start to break that down to early childhood enrollment, um, elementary enrollment and secondary, whether that's middle school or high school, how do we wanna deal with attracting students and filling these seats? And those should start to look like a three to five year plan. It really should be thinking of here's if we're if we're gonna keep the seat and you're committed to keeping the seat, because the seat usually sits in a building. So if you're committing to keeping a seat in a classroom or a building, you're committing to keeping that building operating at full at a full level. And so that means that you're probably gonna want to make a commitment to that campus for a period of time. And when you're gonna do that, that means we're looking at three to five years to keeping that campus um open or running at full capacity and building a plan either by campus or by grade level and starting to plan that out because every single marketing plan that we're doing is separate. There are multiple, there, they're different campaigns that you're building with different purposes. They require different audiences, which require different investments and different measurement, different return on investment and different key performance indicators, which we call KPIs. So you're not just gonna say, okay, we're just gonna put$15,000 a month to this, or$5,000 a month. You really got to look at what is it I'm trying to accomplish and build your plan around that goal. And then start to determine as you're just like you do with everything else that we do with attendance, with student outcomes, with you know, every every other plan that we're tracking, every other district initiative that we're doing, how our bond dollars are being implemented, we start to track this and measure it with our marketing dollars as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Tracy, any uh reaction to that?

SPEAKER_03 17:48

She's right. Uh empty seats are expensive uh and they're hard to address. So there are districts across Texas that are closing campuses now. But wouldn't it be great if we could just keep them open and operational uh because we were able to tell our story?

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah, I agree. And that's a great segue to kind of the next step in this process where um in implementation, where we we see more and more, and like I said, this is the perfect time of year to have this, is making sure that the district leadership and the board are in consensus about how to address the empty seats over time. Uh definitely these decisions are difficult. They're uh certainly emotional, they're sentimental, they can become political. And we've all seen that and lived that. For those of us who you know were went through this in 2011 with budget cuts, 2012, 2013, um, we we've lived it in that sense from the financial sense, but it wasn't necessarily on the enrollment side. It wasn't necessarily addressing potentially permanently not having students where they used to be. The next piece we see is that board members are having a really hard time thinking about the cost of those empty seats in terms of stewardship because they do have those community connections and history and relationships.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Yeah, and you know, as a CFO, that would I I that would be such a difficult issue. I mean, it was I, you know, in 2011 and I in 2008 downturn, I was serving as a CFO in both of those times. And you could address the budget by, you know, making class sizes larger and uh changing bell schedules, but all the low-hanging fruit is gone. Buildings that are only half operational are a very large drain on your overall operating budget.

Strategic Investments in Marketing

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yes, and I think these, you know, as as um school leaders and CFOs are are having these conversations right now with their boards preparing their budgets for next year. Many districts have they're going into a multi, if not mini-year deficit budget. And I think a lot of people, you know, were holding out for the 2025 session to see uh, you know, a funding risk restoration. And although there was uh funding, it was earmarked for for certain things, and a lot of districts are still facing those gaps. So there really is boards looking at, you know, are we at a place where we need to do uh VATRE elections and address our taxpayers to help us start to right size and start to balance our budget? Those are also difficult decisions. So I think when you're looking at marketing decisions, this is an interesting uh investment for a district because it's it's an expense that can be zero. Right now, it has been zero, you know, except if you have a communications department. But even then, they probably weren't doing uh focused, ongoing, year-round investments in running multiple and many campaigns for uh different things. And when I say different things, I've kind of mentioned them already, but reputation management, you know, brand awareness. Do you even know we're out here? Do you know what we offer? And uh before the podcast, Tom was really sharing that the whole dimension of storytelling. And that's, you know, that's the thing about what every district in the state is doing well. How how their people are just excelling, their teachers and their students, getting that, those stories out. That is one piece of this, but from a board perspective as well, it's really looking at uh how do we want to deal with these empty seats? What do we want to invest? What does that look like? And one of the easiest ways we see to start this process is to honestly do a a poll or a community survey. On the brand of the district to take that measurement, that snapshot in time of what does our community think about us? What do they want from us? What kinds of programs? Um, because a lot of these enrollment problems, you can't program your way out of them. That that's not the problem necessarily, that that's your neighbor offers something that you don't offer. Districts excel at different things. And those things are organic, they've developed over time and they they have responded to the needs of their community and their local workforce, what what's needed in their region. And so those things naturally already exist. And um, in terms of looking at where you want to invest, um, doing that poll really helps to determine, okay, if we're gonna look at retention and we're gonna look at communicating to students that are in our district but that aren't choosing us, which typically would be people who've chosen families who've chosen charters, uh, homeschooling or private schools, you know, through the voucher programs now, or other options that they might have, virtual school out of their, you know, completely out of their district and out of their geographical area. Those are all options that they have, micro schools. It's looking at what does the community really want from us in terms of an educational system? And then if you're choosing to open your borders, pulling folks around you and saying, what would you like to have that you currently don't have, or what could we offer that you might offer? That's a great way to get a baseline to start to build that plan and really get the board lined up around that plan so that you can then start to the next phases really look at dedicated, committed funding to do this. And that's the cost of acquisition and the cost of retention.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

But I mean, this because this problem isn't just contained to Texas. It's a discussion at, you know, at the national level among CFOs about, you know, the declining birth rates, the options, you know, and and even if students are in school, we don't value attendance like we used to. So it's it's a the we're dealing, we're getting hit from a multitude of ways, all of which impact funding and all of which impact our ability to uh continue to offer the great programs that we have been our communities have become accustomed to and quite frankly deserve.

Demonstrating Value to Stakeholders

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Well, and you you know you hit on a great point because as we talk about too making these investments, a lot of the things that have been cut from districts, you know, that they're pretty much where, you know, at the base of what they can operate after six years from 2019 to 2025 of not having sometimes enough money to to operate. And so making these decisions to divert money away from either other expense line items or other definitely programs or professional development, or just even from, you know, they just have so few discretionary funds that I think these decisions are really difficult. And I think kind of going back to balancing, uh, you know, we do, let's say we do have a team of eight, we do have a consensus about making this investment. The first thing that I know our CFOs are gonna ask, they ask me, is what's my ROI on this? If I, you know, if we, if we, if we dedicate this funding or as a firm, if they give me this funding and say go out and do this thing, how do I know it worked? And I think, you know, for especially for your chief financial officer, they're gonna have to report that back. Your chief marketing officer, they're going to have to report that back to the board, if nothing else, so these decisions can be re-evaluated and made in the future. So establishing and making sure everyone has clear expectations at the front with between the plan, the board's understanding and the leadership and then the funding that's being invested. How are we gonna measure this and and making sure they're all clear on what phase of marketing they're investing in? Because a lot of people will say, we want to get our enrollment up, and here's all the money we have. This is just the money we have, whether you can reach the audience we need to reach or not. This is what we have. What can you do with it? And that, and that's better than nothing for sure. But being able to link that back to uh we can only do awareness. You're not gonna necessarily get all of these people that that we are able to create as prospects or leads in this process, new people, if you will, people in your district that are not enrolled, children that are not enrolled, their parents. Just because we've gotten their attention doesn't mean that you've invested enough money in that process to get them all the way to a registration or an enrollment. And same thing with teacher recruitment. Just because you put out a few ads and a billboard doesn't mean that you've continued that investment, that ongoing investment in getting that person, that future prospective employee or a family with children all the way through the process that they need to get them to do what's called a call to action, which is to register or to apply or take some sort of action. A vote, this works with elections as well, with bond and tier elections. There's a certain amount of information that people need to be able to make these decisions. And what you're essentially deciding between your plan and your funding is where are we intending to invest? And are we investing enough money? Mathematically, it's a formula. It's not glitter in the air. It's actually a formula and a process. Are we investing enough money to actually get the outcomes that we need? And if the outcome is to fill an empty seat, which I think what we're talking about today is enrollment and student recruitment. If the outcome is to fill one seat, are you willing to invest in that family all the way to the end, or are you just investing in general awareness and reputation management? So that's just an example, but it really kind of illuminates that there are differences in the approach and it does take a defined amount of money to move people through these processes. Um, one of the other things, and and I added this to my list as you know, I was preparing for this conversation to really think through like some of the barriers too that we see. So as we're kind of think about these things that we're talking about today, is lining up a trail of dominoes. One of the other things that that people overlook before they make these investments is their internal systems and their training. And uh and really what it from a leadership standpoint, from the superintendent level or the the cabinet team, a leadership team standpoint, it's really district buy-in. Because I'll give you an example. Let's say we do take, you know, whatever money we have and we launch a campaign, and oh my gosh, the phone starts ringing and people are filling out forms on their phone. And we don't have a website that is set up to take online registration year-round for pre-K. We only take it certain months of the year, and they have to print all of their documents and bring them to a human being versus being able to upload them, or worse yet, they call the district and they need help and they can't get help. So they fall out. That's called basically we it's called a leak. It's called a leak in your in your process. They fall out of the system because they get so frustrated because it's so hard to register. So if you think about trying to do business online or with a company and you want to buy something as simple as a pair of shoes or a vacuum cleaner, it's pretty easy. We all know how to go pick up our phone. We want groceries, we know how to do those things. And those retailers have built systems where we can easily go through a process and take action. We can make a purchase, we can fill out a form, we can submit a request. But in school district world, between PEMs and the way that we've done these processes in the past, I can tell you, in a hundred percent, regardless of the size of the district, in a hundred percent of the districts we've worked in, there are internal barriers between their registration process itself, their PEMs, there having to be some sort of human contact in that process. Those things all need to be cleaned up and even go shopped before before you run out and even start working on. So you do have your plan, your boards in place, you do have money. I'm just gonna tell you, if you start and you just start throwing money out there and you do, people do decide, oh yeah, I love these people. I didn't know that they they did all these things in their district and they had these great, these great special ed services or these great programs. I'm gonna register there. Um, you better be set up to service those new folks, or else you're gonna lose them. Yes, and you're gonna create a tremendous amount of frustration and chaos in your system. And the worst time that we see this happening is with when school starts, because you're already overloaded. You're you're overloaded with just getting the buildings opened and cleaned and stuff where it's supposed to be, and getting kids on buses and into the schools. And all of a sudden now you have people who need help registering because you've launched these campaigns all summer and they're now showing up and you don't have a process cleaned up in order to register them.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

And so I think that's one of the biggest issues is registration because when we choose to roll over and open the new year, it there's got to be a way around it. Uh back when I served to CFO, we created enrollment centers, but thankfully you shouldn't you shouldn't have to drive to a center, you know, and and like we were talking beforehand, call your main line. Is it customer? I mean, people still call. They rely on the phone.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

I I think a lot of what you y'all are talking about is kind of and you were talking about dimensional storytelling, is you really want your your community, prospects, you know, parents and students to to see the the totality of what a school district can offer. Uh you want to experience to be as what they expected. You want it things to facilitate cleanly, you want alignment between different departments. You you don't want to just like like you said, Rana, throw money and like have a not nothing wrong against a billboard, but if that's if you have just these layers uh scattered of different spend, uh the people aren't gonna be convinced. What they're gonna be convinced is that the billboard promises something, and when they go to experience it, it it flows nicely and it's authentic. And what their neighbor told them either is true or not true, and then they feel good about the next steps. And so it sounds like it's like the way really to do a campaign and to to plan and strategize, that's really that is really important, uh, because there is not all the money in the world, and it's it's very complicated, and it's a moving target. You don't know uh there's a lot of environmental factors going in into it. You know, one one thing you guys talked about is population. You know, a lot of it, Rana, if you you deal with urban schools in the big cities in Texas, people moving into the new condos and revitalized downtowns, they're not having kindergartners. And if they do, you know, they they have a single child, and that kid is is has an opair and is going to the Montessori school. So there's a different environmental factors going around, and it's a moving target. And it's like it sounds like you work with the board, you work with staff to get everybody on the same page and use data wise to your advantage and use your stories to your advantage.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

And just a brief example, but this happened uh last summer in two districts, and it happens almost everywhere when we went in to set up the KPIs to say, okay, let's measure like how many students in pre-K did you guys enroll last year, between this time and this time? One was a large school district, one was medium-sized, geographically extremely different, all the way across the state from each other. Neither one of their teams tracked registration because they were all done by phone and in person, either at the campuses or at a registration center like Central Office. There was no history. There were no, no one ever tracked it because they never needed to. Pre-K students could in kindergarten only registered at certain times of the year instead of having open enrollment year-round. So there was no process to track not only the enrollment from last year so that we could track the success this year, as the enrollments were taking place and people were filling out their forms online and hitting submit, and they they could even upload their forms, those enrollments, those registrations. So the parent thought, okay, my kid is registered. They have a spot. I'm done with this. Great, check it off my list. And in reality, all it did was send an email to a registrar to call that parent and recollect all that data a different way over the phone and in person. And so the parents became frustrated. They were confused. They're like, well, why did I have to do all this if I have to do it again? So that's what I'm saying. Like, there's it, there's a process here, and our team does that. We come in and do an audit. So we we go shop kind of and we go back and help you clean up, clean up everything, clean up your website, that makes sense. The forms, put the buttons where they're supposed to be, you know, all that. Everything works. There's a big piece, and then Tracy, Tracy really referred to this, but the customer service aspect of being ready to have company, being ready to welcome a new visitor, a new friend, so that when they did get a person on the phone, those folks were trained, that the whole district had buy-in. And we've all talked about customer service in public ed for probably over 15 years now. But in this type of work, it's critical in closing the sale.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

I remember when I was growing up, before I could have a friend over, I had to clean house and make a house so that and I hated it. So I never had to do it. Yeah. But you know, my mom wanted to make that impression.