Connecting Communications to Enrollment Growth: 5 Takeaways from NSPRA 2026

School communications professionals have always worn a lot of hats. But at NSPRA 2026 in New Orleans, it was clear how the communications role is becoming more closely tied to some of the biggest priorities facing schools and districts today.

Communications leaders shared how a more choice-driven landscape is changing what their teams are being asked to do: not only keep current families informed but also play a leading role in student recruitment by helping families understand their options, communicate what makes their schools distinctive, and demonstrate whether outreach is leading to meaningful action.

Those conversations shaped SchoolMint’s time at NSPRA as well. From our unofficial happy hour to conversations at our booth, we heard firsthand about the enrollment pressures and growth opportunities communications teams are navigating.

That’s why we focused our session, “Fillin’ Seats & Feedin’ Futures: A Cajun Recipe for Enrollment Growth in the Age of School Choice,” (below) on how teams can drive family interest, grow enrollment, and connect outreach to outcomes.

Across the keynote stage, breakout sessions, impromptu hallway conversations, and booth meetups, five themes came up repeatedly.

1. Trust is the most valuable currency in school communications

Technology is changing how quickly organizations can create and distribute information. But producing more content does not automatically create stronger connections.

During the Monday keynote, journalist and author Mariana Atencio challenged attendees to think about what remains real and valuable in an AI-driven world. Her answer was trust, as it’s a resource that can’t be automated and must be earned through consistent, authentic communication.

That message carried through other conference conversations as well. The National School Communicator of the Year finalists reflected on how thoughtful listening, authentic relationships, humility, and a willingness to continue learning have shaped their careers and leadership.

For schools and districts, trust isn’t built by one campaign, one newsletter, or one carefully worded statement. Instead, it’s built through every interaction a family has with the organization.

That includes how clearly an organization explains a difficult decision (for example, a school consolidation or closure), how quickly a school responds to a prospective parent’s enrollment question, how accurately a school/program lives up to its promises, and how consistently an organization’s communications align with the experiences families have in person.

In a noisy communications environment, the goal must be to communicate in ways that families and communities believe.

2. Communication is a leadership responsibility, not a final step

Another message reinforced throughout NSPRA was that strong communication can’t begin after a decision has already been made; it needs to be part of how leaders listen, plan, and communicate from the beginning.

What we heard from superintendents reinforced that connection. They highlighted the importance of building and maintaining strong partnerships with communications professionals, not simply to share decisions but instead to deepen trust across their communities.

Communications teams bring an important perspective to strategic conversations. Because they’re so close to the day-to-day work in the community, they’re uniquely positioned to advise leadership on:

• How decisions may be received
• Where confusion is likely to emerge
• Which audiences need additional context
• What questions families may ask before those questions reach the superintendent’s inbox or surface at the next board meeting

When communications professionals are treated only as the people responsible for announcing a decision, organizations miss an opportunity to shape that decision with a clearer understanding of how it will affect and be received by the community.

The strongest leadership teams involve communicators early, when strategy is still being shaped and there’s time to listen to the community, clarify concerns, and discuss the path forward.

3. School choice has made communications central to enrollment growth

For decades, schools and school systems treated enrollment primarily as a straightforward operational process:

• Families lived within a boundary
• Unless they chose a private school, families completed paperwork for the nearest school option
• They enrolled in the school closest to their home

With the rapid rise of school choice and online enrollment, that old reality has changed in a major way: school choice is no longer a future possibility but is instead the environment schools must operate in today.

Families are actively weighing their options. According to a National School Choice Awareness Foundation survey, 53.7% of parents have considered enrolling their child in a new school.

That means schools are now competing for attention alongside district schools, charter schools, magnet programs, specialized academies, private schools, virtual programs, and homeschool options. Most families begin that research online, often long before they submit an inquiry or speak with an enrollment coordinator.

As our CEO, Jinal Jhaveri, explained in The Future of K-12 Enrollment Will Be Defined by Family Trust, the bigger shift isn’t simply that families have more options but that they’re playing an active role in the enrollment market.

They’re forming opinions earlier in the enrollment journey and expecting schools to earn their confidence through clear, responsive communications and an accessible enrollment experience.

That shift understandably creates anxiety around declining enrollment and families choosing other options, but it also gives communications teams a great opportunity to directly influence enrollment.

By shaping what families discover, understand, and experience from the beginning, communicators can help schools earn attention, build trust, and guide more families toward the next step. For example:

• A website page may determine whether a family adds a school to their shortlist.
• A social post may introduce parents to a program they didn’t know existed.
• A digital campaign may reach a family affected by a school closure.
• An invitation to tour a school may re-engage a family and give the school a chance to become their clear first choice.
• A clear explanation of how easy it is to apply may remove uncertainty and move families to take the next step.

This was a central theme of our NSPRA session: the communicator’s role is expanding in a choice-driven environment.

Schools need to clearly explain what makes their programs distinctive, reach families beyond their existing communities, and create a consistent experience from initial awareness through enrollment.

That doesn’t mean communications teams should carry enrollment growth alone. It means communications, marketing, enrollment, and leadership teams must approach the work as a connected strategy, aligning what families hear with what they experience at every stage of the journey.

Every message shapes how a family perceives a school. In the new era of school choice, that makes communication an essential part of enrollment growth.

4. Marketing data matters when it’s the right kind of data

Communications teams have access to a wealth of performance data. They can report on impressions, clicks, website visits, video views, email opens, social engagement, and event attendance. Those metrics can show whether a message reached an audience, but they rarely answer the question leaders truly want to know:

Did that contribute to enrollment?

A digital advertisement may generate hundreds of clicks. A school fair may attract a large crowd. A social campaign may perform better than anything the team published last year. But what happened next?

• Did families request information?
• Did they attend a tour?
• Did they begin an application?
• Did they complete registration?

This gap between communications activity and enrollment outcomes was central to our conversations at NSPRA. Our session focused on helping teams look beyond the first moment of engagement and understand how family interest moves through the full enrollment journey.

When teams know which campaigns, messages, events, and channels are generating meaningful action, they can make better decisions about where to focus limited time and budget. They can also identify where families are losing momentum and provide the right communication or support before interest goes cold.

Clicks and impressions still have value, but they’re the beginning of the story, not the outcome.

5. Communicators need connected strategies, not more disconnected responsibilities

School communications teams are already managing websites, social media, newsletters, media relations, internal communications, crisis response, family engagement, brand consistency, and executive communications.

Many are doing that work with very limited staffing. In NSPRA’s 2024 Profile of a School Communicator report, it was reported that 35% of school communicators work as a one-person communications department.

Therefore, the solution isn’t simply “add student recruitment, enrollment marketing, lead management, and ROI reporting to an already-crowded list of responsibilities.”

Instead, K-12 communicators need stronger collaboration across departments, clear priorities, and systems that reduce manual work rather than create more of it. That means connecting activities that often happen in isolation:

• Communications teams generate awareness and promote schools.
• Marketing campaigns capture prospective family interest.
• School staff host tours and answer questions.
• Enrollment teams manage applications, lotteries, offers, and registration.
• Leadership and board members evaluate performance across schools and programs.

When each part of that journey lives in a separate spreadsheet, inbox, platform, or department, families can receive inconsistent follow-up and leaders struggle to understand what’s working.

A more connected approach gives teams a clearer view of the family journey, from the first message a parent encounters to the moment a student completes enrollment.

It also allows communications professionals to spend less time piecing together reports and more time doing what they do best: understanding audiences, telling meaningful stories, and building stronger relationships.