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I received an email today from Rich Finlinson, Public Relations Specialist for the Utah Education Network, who attended my NSPRA Gold Mine Session in Washington, DC, in July. The session, “School PR and Social Media,” focused on using social media in doing public relations for schools.

Rich wanted some advice about online press release creation and distribution sites, which I’ll get to in another post, probably tomorrow.

But in communicating with him, I decided to check out the Utah Education Network online and was blown away not only by the agency’s website but by the educational programs the state of Utah offers its kids. Most notable was the Utah Electronic High School, that state’s version of online high school courses as an option for students.

I recently heard Susan Patrick, President and Chief Executive Officer of the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL), speak about virtual schools at the staff development meeting of our Lower Hudson Regional Information Center.

Patrick spoke about the growing presence of virtual schools, online courses and distance learning in the U.S., with state education departments jumping on this bandwagon with zeal. Patrick’s organization, NACOL, is an international K-12 nonprofit association representing the interests of practitioners, providers and students involved in online learning worldwide. You can see the lengthy list of institutional NACOL members (schools) on their site.

The Utah Electronic High School has been in operation since 1994, and provides a wide variety of courses to Utah students. Courses are added each year as interest and funding permit. The Electronic High School courses have been developed by master teachers and are correlated to the state of Utah’s core standards and objectives.

Students enrolled at the UEHS are able to work at their own pace until the class is completed. Most students, they say, spend about 200 hours on a full-credit course, and all courses are rigorous.

This is the case in many states, but when Ms. Patrick showed us a map of the U.S. depicting states either with government-funded virtual school programs or with partially government-funded programs, New York was one of a handful of states without either. How entrenched and backward is the state I live in?

The public approves our public school budgets, except in the state’s large cities. So most New York boards of education are under pressure each May, during the budget vote season, just to get a bare bones budget past the voters. I work for school districts where every penny, from textbooks to salaries, is picked apart by taxpayer groups sick and tired of paying high local, New York, and federal taxes. Property taxes alone in my neck of the woods run anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 a year.

Unfortunately, I don’t see virtual schools making their mark in New York, unless they’re privately funded, the state overhauls the public education financing system, or the voters decide to be gracious. Or none of the above.

And the sad thing is, our kids will be the beneficiaries of this sad, backwoods legacy.

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The National School Public Relations Association kicked off its 55th annual seminar today in the nation’s capital, home of George Bush and humidity. But heck — this is a great place for a conference. I’m a jaded New Yorker, so I was pleasantly surprised when I caught a cab ride from Union Station to the hotel with the friendliest cabbie I’ve ever met. What a decent fellow — we talked about the differences between the Capital Fourth and the Macy’s Fireworks display. A far cry from the screeching, hair-raising New York cab ride I experienced just the other night. I found myself praying for the safety of the subway and digging my nails into the vinyl upholstery.

Back to NSPRA, where we attended the Opening Reception and caught up with fellow school PR folks. I was delighted to finally meet NSPRA Senior Associate Carol Mowen, APR, who discovered my blog post about NSPRA and is quite the web whiz herself. She’s giving a tour of the organization’s new website on Wednesday, in case you’re here at the conference this week. If you haven’t discovered the new NSPRA site, check it out at the same web address — www.nspra.org. Carol and I spoke for a few minutes about blogs, wikis, websites, social bookmarking and social networking sites. It was fun to speak with someone whose eyes don’t glaze over when the talk turns to netspeak.

The New York contingent already had its first surreal moment when it was approached during the reception by a couple of actors portraying ultra-conservative author Anne Coulter and former Democratic prez hopeful Hillary Clinton. Wasn’t it Coulter who recently said she’d rather support Hillary than McCain? You had to see the male actor playing Ms. Coulter. Someone took a photo of him next to none other than Vicki Presser of the Scarsdale schools — and I’ve posted it here.
Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to a keynote by Wendy Puriefoy, president of the Public Education Network and a nationally recognized expert on school reform and civil society. I’m also going to cruise as many workshops as possible, but particularly Tim Carroll’s workshop, “Byte into Technology to Energize Your PR Efforts, and Gary Marx’s “Five Forces…That Will Profoundly Impact Our Future.”

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