District staff outline plans to expand sports media, marquees and student-created content
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Summary
District communications and athletics staff described efforts to expand social-media reach, use marquee and scoreboard content, run a media day with students and grow student-created photography and video to promote athletics and school events.
Andrew Feynl, the district education technology specialist, and Chris Ochinski, who leads athletics communications, told the board they are building the district’s social-media and in-house media capacity to highlight student athletes and events.
Feynl said the district has coordinated districtwide communications campaigns, mass notifications and digital signage; Ochinski said athletics-focused social media has seen significant community reach. "Since I started it 2 years ago, our Instagram account is reaching almost 20,000 people in the community a month," Ochinski said, describing efforts to use photography-club students for game-day graphics and video-board content.
Why it matters: The presentation outlined how the district plans to use student-created content and digital boards to raise visibility for athletics and other school events, which affects school branding and community engagement.
The pair showed examples of game-day posts, intro slides for varsity players, and outreach through marquees along McArthur Road and Mechanicsville Road. They described a recent media day that produced photos and videos used for social posts and scoreboard introductions, and they said monthly communications (the "Zephyr" newsletter) coordinates messaging to staff and families.
The presenters said they meet monthly to plan content and to involve photography and media students in producing materials; they also described plans to incorporate a district mascot ("Big Z") into videos and graphics and to expand morning announcements and digital-scoreboard features.
The board thanked the presenters; there were no motions connected to the presentation. The discussion is informational and will inform future communications and athletics activities.
