When Amy Bryan took over as superintendent of the Butler County School System in March of 2014, she made communication with the system’s stakeholders a priority.

“One of my first endeavors as superintendent was to create a public relations plan,” Bryan said. “There are great things going on in our schools that were never communicated to our parents and community.”

Bryan and her team made sure parents and community members heard the positive stories of students excelling in academics, athletics and other extracurricular activities.

As a result, the school system received three Gold Awards of Excellence for communication from the Alabama School Public Relations Association.

Bryan also received the Outstanding Leadership in School/Community Relations Award.

“I shared that as a new superintendent, I believed one of my primary jobs was to be the public relations person to represent our schools, to share all of the great things going on in our classrooms, and to improve the public perception of our schools,” Bryan said. “I joined the organization in order to learn all I could about promoting our schools.”

The school system received awards for a publication representing the district’s and six schools’ continuous improvement plans, school system’s website and for its presentation of strategic planning through community involvement.

Some of the highlights of the system’s new public relations campaign include:

Fifteen community presentations

An updated website that is updated daily

Creation of a Facebook page

Created and widely distributed a Five-Year System Strategic Plan

New logo

A marketing campaign featuring future graduates of the school

A marketing campaign featuring graduates of the school

A plan for the system’s first annual report of the 2014-2015 school year

Parent Extravaganza at each of our six schools

Superintendent appearing monthly on local radio show

“It was great to be recognized on a statewide level for the public relations improvements our team has been working on – especially knowing that larger school systems have a whole public relations staff to do this kind of work,” Bryan said.