Hartford Public Schools.

In March of 2022, HPS paid $200,000 to The Causeway Agency for a “marketing and branding campaign” to promote HPS to parents looking for “school choice” options.

Last fall, HPS paid $200,000 to Avon marketing gurus Adams & Knight (“Hartford Public Schools Go Vegan”) to promote the HPS brand with streaming video, audio spots, and a “media toolkit.”  All with the purpose of inducing teachers and students to come to Hartford.

Last month, HPS gave ESS Staffing and Management Solutions (“HPS’ Substitute for Effective Talent Management”) $2.5 million to promote the HPS brand locally in a “grassroots recruiting” effort aimed at hiring substitute teachers and paraprofessionals (I attended two large events in Hartford over the past two weeks, the Hartford Jazz Festival and the Riverfront Food Truck Festival.  At neither event did HPS/ESS have a booth set up seeking to recruit local folks as subs and paras).

Together with pathetic fluff pieces fed by HPS’ communication staff to the Hartford Courant rag and the fools at WFSB, these failed and wasted attempts by HPS to “brand” themselves – like they were UCONN instead of HPS – is now being taken to another level as they partner with CT Public Broadcasting (CPTV).

HPS is investing another $240,000 into their multi-layered branding efforts by having CPTV create 3–5 minute spots which will be aired across their local channels.  As you watch and listen to such CPTV programming as NPR, PBS, and Sesame Street, an HPS spot will appear, trying to sell HPS to the public as if it were Bud Light.

In his presentation to the Board of Education on the CPTV deal, district propaganda specialist Jesse Sugarman stated that surrounding the HPS message with the great programming provided by CPTV, “elevates” that message (similarly, if a teacher recruiting program sought to surround its efforts with something great, I don’t know, perhaps one of the country’s largest jazz festivals, this ought to increase brand recognition and recruiting efforts).  However, if the public and insiders know that the message is crafted on rhetoric and lies, applying CPTV’s lipstick only creates a lead balloon.

A positive aspect of the CPTV deal is that Weaver High School’s Journalism and Media pathway students will be invited to monthly job shadowing events with CPTV.  Board Member Browdy was of the opinion that the CPTV deal should be heavily weighted in favor of the student engagement element, rather than the marketing element.  If the folks at ReadyCT, paid $600,000 by HPS to create and managing career pathways at Hartford high schools (“Board of Education Flops Again”), had used a portion of that check to bring CPTV on board with the Journalism and Media pathway students at Weaver, Ms. Browdy’s intuition would have already been reality.

With their main office located on Asylum Street in Hartford, one would have imagined that CPTV and HPS would have already been engaged in multiple student and district projects.  However, one would also think that having an airport in Hartford, which offers many school based career training programs, would mean that HPS and that airport would have an ongoing relationship (even though that relationship would be currently threatened by political geniuses looking to close that airport).  The lack of an HPS/CPTV relationship prior to this week may come from that fact that CPTV’s “Community Advisory Board,” which “helps Connecticut Public ensure that effective community input goes into our program planning and development,” does not include a Hartford community member.

HPS would do well to note that all the marketing firms in the world could not improve on the Donald Trump brand.  Rather than spending money and effort on making HPS “look good” to outsiders, they ought to spend those resources on fixing the foundational problems within, then the product would sell itself.  If the folks who manufacture Bud Light are not drinking it, how can you expect to sell it to others?