EPISD to consider marketing contract to help reverse declining enrollment

The number of students enrolling in the El Paso Independent School District is falling by more than one-thousand every year, leading to a loss of about $6 million in funding every year, district officials said.

“That’s about the size of a small high school,” said EPISD Board of Trustees President Dori Fenenbock. “And we’re not just going to sit back and accept that. We’re going to change the trend.”

With open enrollment and competition between districts for students now a reality in the region, El Paso’s largest district is looking to reverse trends by getting its message out.

“We need to improve our communication strategy and community awareness,” Fenenbock said.

The district is looking for solutions when it comes to loss of students. Up for consideration are a wide variety of options.

“The programs we offer in EPISD, whether it’s laptops in classrooms early universal – early Pre-K, the early college high schools, dual-language across the district,” Fenenbock said. “These are programs that resonate in our community, and are important to our families and our parents. And when they’re looking at choices where they want to send their students, they will choose EPISD because of it.”

On Tuesday’s agenda is consideration of a $250,000 contract to hire the marketing and promotions firm BrandEra. The company has worked on similar types of campaigns involving school district choice elsewhere in Texas, particularly the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

But EPISD isn’t the only district looking at how it’s perceived outside the district.

“We’ll be purchasing some billboards,” said Socorro Independent School District spokesman Daniel Escobar. “We’ll have a 15-second spot that’ll be playing at local theaters. We’ll be putting signs at some of our school buses and school buildings and such.”

Escobar said his district will be advertising in a variety of ways starting in just a few weeks, all developed by district personnel. SISD is not an open enrollment district, but it will still have to consider the draw from other districts that are.

“The more community support we have, the more buy-in we have,” Escobar said, “the more successful our kids are going to be.”

As for the next largest district in the region, Ysleta ISD, its spokeswoman Patricia Ayala told ABC-7 they are “planning similar external promotions produced in-house.”

EPISD’s board meeting to discuss the step will be at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the district headquarters on Boeing drive.