Communications Department
Turning Stakeholders into Advocates

The Communications Department builds relationships with the Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD community to make sure that the district is aligned with the interests of its stakeholders. Supporting these relationships involves a wide range of tasks: writing, attending events to gather information and take pictures, hosting events, graphic design and desktop publishing, web development, and more.

Relationships with Businesses and Organizations:

• The Adopt-A-School program supports relationships with organizations who would like to give resources to individual schools, groups of schools, or the entire district.
• We enjoy keeping the HEB Chamber of Commerce informed of the district's progress and growth by providing a yearly "State of the District" address and listening to the input of local business leaders.

Relationships with local residents

• The Volunteers in Public Schools program (VIPS) facilitates the donation of more than 600,000 hours of volunteer time each school year, or more than 20 hours per student. These volunteers are parents and family, retired teachers, local professionals, and anyone else who is eager to learn more about the district and make an impact on student success.
• The Backpack email newsletter is a monthly digest of major news affecting the whole district. Topics include changes in administration, legislative updates, information about new student programs, and the celebration of staff and students honors. Major announcements and timely information (including school closings) are sent to subscribers between regular monthly editions.
• The Communications Department works directly with local media outlets to share district news with area residents. We help reporters gather information for stories about HEB ISD and report information about inclement weather closings.
• We solicit additional input through surveys, focus groups, discussions with community members, and any other opportunity we can find!

Online Relationships

• The Communications Department creates and maintains the district website.
• The Communications Department oversees websites maintained by other district employees:
  • Each department has designated a Web Site Administrator who is responsible for maintaining the department site with direct support from the Communications Department.
  • Each school also has a Web Site Administator who is responsible for maintaining information on the school-wide site with extra training and support from the Communications Department.
  • Teachers, principals, nurses, counselors, and other on-campus professionals maintain their own site with support and initial training from the Communications Department.
  For all of these sites, the Communications Department creates the design template (including backgrounds and header graphics), develops guidelines for staff use, develops and conducts training, provides support including developing guide and documents and submitting bug reports, and more.
   
• We use social media tools to connect with community members in ways that are convenient to them, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
• The Edge website has information and videos about featured student programs that HEB ISD offers.
• The Winner's Circle section of the site features students and others who have won awards or other recognition and is based on submissions from website visitors.