This summer, Indiana newspapers will join schools and our Department of Education in a cooperative effort to focus public attention on education by creating a special news section around the legal advertising required in our reporting of school performance. Although some of you already may have worked out something similar to this, I am asking that you and other school administrators take a close look at working with newspapers on this special project. It was developed by our staff in cooperation with the statewide newspaper organization, Hoosier State Press Association. It may have some additional benefits for you. Teachers and principals can be offered new opportunities to tell about programs, plans, and accomplishments.
Administrators can report on corporation-wide achievements.
The school board can express its philosophies. No additional cost to schools is required. If we wish to encourage wider community involvement in schools, we can use this opportunity, while we already are preparing a report, to do a better job of telling our story. The legal advertising that the General Assembly requires during the first two weeks of August is being revised for future years, but we can begin to make it better this year. The newspaper association distributed a prototype section to its members as a way to demonstrate one possibility, using the Warsaw Community Schools and the Warsaw Times-Union newspaper for the model report.