How the #SocialSchool4EDU Partnership Led to Every Staff Member Becoming a Storyteller in Wrightstown

Carla Buboltz has spent over 30 years within Wrightstown Community School District (WCSD) in Wisconsin, serving as superintendent for the majority of that time. She has always been a self-described “cheerleader” for her students, staff, and community. After partnering with #SocialSchool4EDU in 2018 for day-to-day social media management, Carla’s cheerleading efforts rose to a whole new level.

As an administrator, she knows every teacher (over 100) and tries to get to know every student (over 1,300) and family in the district. Good news occurs across all three school buildings every day – and Carla is passionate about shining a spotlight on these happenings.

But the district didn’t have a consistent storyteller to tell those stories. Without a school communications professional, Carla and the building principals took social media onto their plates. They struggled to keep the ideas fresh. Their efforts were inconsistent and not representative of every student.

Now, every staff member can be a storyteller! Wrightstown’s #SocialSchool4EDU Account Manager, Liz Zimmerman, is working behind-the-scenes to curate, polish, and share those stories with the world on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Carla shared that as an administrator, she gets a general, global picture of what’s going on in WCSD. The district’s new social media presence allows her to get a more intimate view of what is going on in the classrooms and across extracurriculars and events.

Even the school board has gotten involved! After learning that every like, comment, and share helps a post reach more people, the WCSD school board doubled their efforts to help spread the schools’ stories.

Carla especially appreciates not having to have her eyes on social media all the time. She knows that Liz is watching out for questions and comments and will alert her to anything that needs to be addressed.

“It was an easy decision for us,” Carla said. “We continue to tell our story without us having to have our eyes on the story all of the time.”

She added that she loves getting to “just check” the social media pages without having to be the one gathering stories. Every staff member gets to take on the cheerleader role and is empowered to do their part to curate the WCSD story. As Carla says, if you aren’t telling your school’s story, someone else could fill that void with negativity or misinformation.

Quick tip: To help motivate her staff to submit stories, Carla runs drawings for Amazon gift cards, granting an entry for every story submitted. This helps keep content fresh.

When WCSD went to the community in 2020 for a large referendum, the district social media was there to back them up. Carla shared that they didn’t even use social media to drive more than general information and remind the community to vote.

Instead, they kept “good news” at the forefront of their pages during the referendum campaign. The community could witness the dedication of the staff and the growth students experienced at WCSD. The referendum passed with widespread support. Now, they’ll use social media to celebrate ground-breakings and other referendum results to thank taxpayers for their support.