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CEL-ebrating Our 2022 NSPRA Award Winners

From interactive websites to integrated campaigns that increased enrollment, our school partners are developing innovative projects that resonate with audiences.

We applaud all of our school partners who received National School Public Relations Association awards in July. Learn more about their award-winning strategic communications work — and help us keep the CEL-ebration going.

Enrollment Campaign
“Launch Your Future Here”
New Code Academy, a program of Bloomington Public Schools

HR Recruitment Campaign
“Today’s Mission: Love Your Job” HR recruitment campaign
Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8

Website Redesigns
Osseo Area Schools – ISD 279
San Diego County Office of Education
SoWashCo Schools

Strategic Branding
Robbinsdale Area Schools
SoWashCo Schools — “Be seen. Be heard. Be bold.”

New Code Academy, a program of Bloomington Public Schools

New Code Academy, a new virtual learning program within Bloomington Public Schools in Minnesota, earned a Golden Achievement Award for its “Launch Your Future Here” enrollment campaign.

As a growing number of parents sought more robust, flexible online learning options during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomington Public Schools had an opportunity to boost awareness about its online offering. School leaders partnered with CEL to rebrand and market the district’s Bloomington Online Schools (BOS) program and actively recruit for open enrollment students.

This multi-prong project included:

- Developing a mobile-first website with a blog optimized for SEO
- Rebranding BOS as New Code Academy—a memorable name that stands out in a crowded and competitive online space.
- Developing an energetic tagline – Launch Your Future Here.
- Leveraging key messaging, fresh designs and digital marketing tools
- Creating a new brand identity that included a logo, color palette, graphic patterns and fonts.
- Developing a New Code Academy Brand Guide, content calendar, social media guide and e-newsletter template

The efforts proved successful. By the start of the 2021-2022 school year, New Code Academy surpassed its open enrollment goal of 20%, leveling off at 29% open enrollment.

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8

Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 in Colorado received an Award of Merit for its “Today’s Mission: Love Your Job” HR recruitment campaign.

Like many schools, Fountain-Fort Carson faced employee recruitment challenges, including nationwide staffing shortages and a highly mobile military community. The district needed to compete for talent in a highly competitive environment. The communications and human resources teams partnered with CEL to develop a staff recruitment campaign to overcome these challenges.

The recruitment campaign tagline – “Today’s Mission: Love Your Job” — resonated with potential employees. In addition, the use of a camouflage design pattern throughout the campaign was a value-centric differentiator that appealed to retired/former military, as well as those with an affinity for the armed services. The tagline was utilized in a variety of ways, including on billboards, yard signs, digital and print flyers, newspaper advertisements, social media graphics and braided backdrops for recruitment fairs.

The campaign helped raise awareness of the district and opportunities for immediate employment and significantly increased the number of inquiries and applications for hourly roles.

Osseo Area Schools

Osseo Area Schools – ISD 279 in Minnesota earned an Award of Merit for its updated website. School leaders partnered with CEL to develop a centralized, mobile-friendly, fully responsive design with clear, easy-to-use navigation for 30 total websites, including the district site, school sites and two specialty microsites.

Together, we built updated, robust content. In all, more than 12,500 web pages were consolidated to 3,600 web pages — reducing Osseo’s web page count by 82.57 percent. In addition, the websites included 100 percent accessibility upon launch and continue to maintain a high accessibility rating.

The website project also included:

- Fully incorporating co-branding elements, such as the district emblem and mascot into the school websites
- Reviewing Google Analytics and usage to prioritize content and top-level buttons
- Decreasing the number of PDFs on the website to improve accessibility
- Implementing Weglot for accurate translation and then training the district’s translation liaisons how to customize translations as needed
- Developing a staff intranet
- Developing specialty website pages, including the Virtual Kindergarten Information Fair, which is available in five languages
- Developing a Career Center hub that incorporated an interactive “Explore our Community” component to support employee recruitment and retention

Robbinsdale Area Schools

Robbinsdale Area Schools in Minnesota earned numerous awards, including an Award of Merit for its ‘We R All In’ DEI” newsletter and an Award of Excellence for the Robbinsdale Virtual Academy animated video, a Kindergarten family guide and the district’s branding/image package.

For the branding package, the communications team partnered with CEL to create common messaging, graphics, templates and toolkits (more than 1,070 files), as well as enhanced website elements. The district maintained its logo, adding a modern color palette and patterns to unify all of its school identities. In addition, to make it easy for schools to use the files, all templates are accessible in Google docs or slides. School principals and office staff participated in marketing training.

The project included:

- Brand style guides and logo files
- Digital and print brand package, including stationery, letterhead email signatures, envelopes, master slide deck and business cards
- Back-to-School newsletter and District newsletter template
- Templates for posters, fliers, certificates, thank you notes, postcards
- Multiple Electronic newsletter masthead
- Kindergarten marketing materials
- Social media templates and digital ads (search and social)
- Pop-up banner (events), step-and-repeat banner
- School fact sheets, newsletter masthead, templates and training
- Marketing toolkit with instructions and hyperlinks to access all resources

San Diego County Office of Education

The San Diego County Office of Education earned an Award of Excellence for its updated website design, which resulted in streamlined content, strategic storytelling and a 97.96 percent webpage consolidation.

As SDCOE was implementing a new website platform, this project required a reimagined sitemap, updated systems integration and significant content migration. The website was consolidated from 68,759 pages to 1,412 pages, making the mobile-friendly site accessible and easier to navigate. It also now incorporates SDCOE’s vibrant color palette, as well as useful content features, such as sections, accordion drop-down menus, page pops and “more to explore” call-outs.

The website project also included:

- Migrating website content to a new platform
- Restructuring the site map and improving navigation
- Featured the most frequently visited pages prominently on the homepage
- Reviewing Google Analytics and usage to prioritize content and call-out sections
- Developing focused content areas to support SDCOE’s strategy and storytelling
- Removing stock photography and incorporating additional SDCOE student photos
- Reducing PDF and external document usage throughout the sites
- Developing specialized pages, such as a Virtual Wellness Center resource hub, to boost user engagement with the site
- Enhancing SEO and searchability on the site for a more positive user experience
- Redirecting more than 5,000 URLs to ensure the transition to the new website was seamless.
- Training the skills for website content updates to a large group of SDCOE administrators with a range of abilities and permissions.

SoWashCo Schools

South Washington County Schools in Minnesota, better known as SoWashCo, received double recognition. The district earned two awards, including a Golden Achievement Award for its “Be seen. Be heard. Be bold.” branding campaign and an Award of Excellence for its updated website design, which was timed to support the district rebranding reveal to external audiences.

District leaders partnered with CEL to develop a student-centered, equitable, accessible and modern website. The project included one district site, two program sites, a staff intranet and 24 school sites, as well as staff training to establish regular content updates across all sites.

The overall goal was to deliver consistent quality and functionality across all sites, including layout and navigation. Another priority was to pair the new SoWashCo Schools brand identity with each school and amplify the district’s core values: collaboration, relationships, equity, integrity, and continuous improvement. The result is a colorful, cohesive, mobile-first and accessible website that provides a better user experience for all stakeholders.

The website project also included:

- Migrating website content to a new platform
- Restructuring the site map and Improving navigation
- Reviewing Google Analytics and usage to prioritize content and call-outs
- Unifying pages and programs to streamline the sitemap and content
- Improving content readability and accessibility
- Developing focused content areas to support district strategies and storytelling
- Eliminating department-created Google Sites and migrating associated content/resources to the new district website
- Developing a staff intranet with sign-in capability
- Co-branding district and schools with logos and color palettes
- Designing consistent website features and elements, such as tabs and utility functions, across all sites
- Improving SEO and searchability within the sites

In addition, a special congratulations to our CEL partners Anoka-Hennepin Schools and Captivate Media on their NSPRA awards. View the full list of this year’s award recipients on the NSPRA website.

Ready to work on award-winning projects, too? Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our CEL leadership team, and let’s get started today.