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After modest outside contract returns, LRSD shifts recruitment work in-house and adopts quarterly tracking
Summary
Administration said outside contractor CASE/CASA produced limited net returns and will phase recruitment strategies into district staff work: attendance secretaries and principals will get quarterly reporting responsibilities and scripts to follow for withdrawals and re-engagement.
After reviewing results from an outside recruitment contract, the Little Rock School District announced a strategy to bring much of the student-recruitment and reengagement work in-house.
Administration reviewed data from a recent campaign with an outside vendor that produced roughly 130–135 students and cost the district about $850 per recruited/retained student; leaders concluded the net return on investment was insufficient to continue the same contracting model. Superintendent Dr. Wright said the district will adopt several of the vendor’s outreach tools and scripts but will assign responsibilities to in-house staff — principally attendance secretaries and principals who now have 12-month assignments — to track withdrawals and perform direct outreach.
Under the new plan, attendance secretaries will report withdrawn-student data to the district office every quarter; the district will disaggregate reasons for withdrawal and return that information to principals with prescribed follow-up actions. Trustees asked for a rubric to measure ROI for the in-house approach and suggested district-level marketing to compete with charter outreach efforts.
Trustees stressed two common reasons families cited for leaving: slow responsiveness from schools and unresolved bullying; they said the proposed approach, if executed with timeliness and empathy, could produce better retention results than an outside vendor that does outreach outside the district’s operations.
What’s next: Administration will provide the board with the proposed ROI rubric and a quarterly reporting format to evaluate whether the in-house approach achieves better retention at lower cost than past contracting efforts.
