LAUSD Hires Consultants to Fix Image
Hammered by a barrage of negative publicity in recent months, Los Angeles Unified School District officials have quietly hired two consultants to help improve their public image.
The school district also hired the public relations firm Rogers Group to focus exclusively on dealing with fallout from an electronic payroll system that has left thousands of employees underpaid or overpaid since February.
The recent hirings come in addition to a six-person communications staff with a nearly $1.4 million budget, an overall $10 million communications budget, and a separate consulting contract with Darry Sragow, who helps LAUSD develop communications strategies and policy issues.
But LAUSD officials on Tuesday defended the public relations moves, saying that even with the additions, their communications budget pales in comparison to those of other large school districts.
Click here for the full story.
The Times and the Daily Breeze wrote about the school board's vote to approve spending opposed by the superintendent.
Comments
Do you really need to pay 6 figures to fix an image problem that LAUSD created for itself. Check out this adventure on using myspace to keep kids from dropping out:
http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupProfile&groupID=100711898&Mytoken=58D4246B-A77E-43B4-A72776E8E8080BF18425213
Nice. This is the kind of great ideas consultants and the $10 million dollar communications people propose.
They need to get in the classroom and see you it is dealing with the type of child in the myspace profile above.
Posted by: David | November 28, 2007 7:00 PM