Quakertown communications director outlines social media, website and newsletter plans

Melissa Hardy, the new communications director for the Quakertown Community School District (QCSD), told the district’s communications committee in May that she has spent the past two weeks inventorying school social accounts, gaining access to district social profiles and beginning website updates.

Hardy said the district’s content interactions rose “over 200% or close to 300%” in the last 30 days and that a Resource Officer Appreciation Day post drew “almost 4,000 views.” She summarized immediate priorities as consolidating and cleaning up social accounts, taking control of district profiles, developing a newsletter schedule and coordinating a unified calendar across schools.

The committee was told Hardy has obtained access to the district X account and an Instagram account (both referenced in the meeting as qc sd/… handles) and has “just gained access to our LinkedIn,” which she expects to use for staff recruiting and culture-building posts. She said some school pages have active PTO-driven posts but are not posting items the school itself should publish; “if you’re not gonna give it a 10%, you really shouldn’t have an account,” she told the committee.

Hardy said she has been meeting with school staff to collect login credentials and to identify accounts that should be deactivated, consolidated or retained. She listed elementary schools with little or no Instagram/X activity and said she will work with those schools to decide whether to maintain additional platforms beyond Facebook.

On newsletters and metrics, Hardy said a recent email newsletter performed poorly when delivered by email but that the same content posted to Facebook received more than 1,000 views and 59 clicks. The difference prompted discussion about deliverability: a board member asked whether the district has domain authentication (DKIM) or other measures to prevent messages going to spam, and an IT staff member replied that there are rules in place but that Google’s filtering plays a significant role in delivery.

Committee members and staff discussed a unified district calendar. An IT staff member described a process the district can use next year: share a Google Calendar with individual buildings for updates, export those files and import the combined calendar to the website to create a single, district-wide events calendar.

Hardy described planned communications work through the end of the fiscal year: monthly meetings with school communicators, producing a board newsletter and a district newsletter, creating school-level newsletters, capturing new photos and video for the website, increasing short-form video (“reels”) to drive engagement, and identifying local partners for staff-appreciation posts. Committee members asked for a unified calendar and more visible coordination across buildings for families with children in multiple schools.

A cabinet member who spoke during the meeting said Hardy has “been a huge welcome addition” and confirmed that Hardy reports to cabinet-level leadership; the same speaker said the district will dedicate time through June 30 for Hardy to acclimate and that the district plans to present a revised 2025–26 communications plan at the July meeting. No motions or formal votes were taken during the committee update.

Looking ahead, Hardy plans to continue school-by-school outreach to secure account access, finalize whether some PTO or athletics accounts will be left independent or integrated with district-managed accounts, and publish a communications plan for the coming school year.