Public K-12 enrollment peaked at 50.8 million students in the fall of 2019. By 2031, it’s projected to fall to 46.9 million, a nationwide drop of nearly 8%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At the same time, according to Gallup, public trust in K-12 education is at a record low. Only about a third of Americans say they’re satisfied with the quality of K-12 education nationally. However, parents are nearly twice as satisfied with their own child’s school as they are with U.S. education generally.

Families aren’t unhappy with their school. They’re unhappy with a confusing national narrative about schools, one built more on perceptions than personal experience. That’s not a curriculum problem or a funding problem; it’s a communications, marketing and experience problem. In other words, it’s a problem districts can do something about.

From Service to Hospitality

Public schools do remarkable and meaningful work every day, educating every student who walks through their doors, regardless of ability, background or circumstance. That is an extraordinary responsibility, and most districts do it well. But that is service – doing the job well. It’s not yet hospitality, which is about how people feel while interacting with your district. Closing the trust gap takes both.

Restaurateur Will Guidara, author of the bestselling book Unreasonable Hospitality, says, “Service is black and white; hospitality is color…. Black and white means you’re doing your job with competence and efficiency; color means you make people feel great about the job you’re doing for them.” 

Districts who are closing their own perception gap aren’t necessarily the ones spending the most on marketing. They’re the ones that have figured out how to make people feel seen, welcomed and as though they belong at every touchpoint along the way.

Hospitality in Schools 

A little intention and small gestures go a long way. It’s a front office that greets a nervous new family by name instead of handing them a clipboard. It's a principal who picks up the phone to personally welcome a family before the first day of school. It's a text to parents on day one with a photo of their student so they're not spending the whole afternoon wondering how their child is doing. It's signage at the entrance that says "please use this door" instead of "do not enter."

None of these cost much, but they do take intention.

“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Intention means every decision, from the most obviously significant to the seemingly mundane, matters. To do something with intentionality means to do it thoughtfully, with clear purpose and an eye on the desired result.” 

-Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality

Look around at your local colleges and universities, or even most private schools, and you'll see organizations that understand the essential need to make their school stand out — and they do it through intentional connections with families. They do small things well, like remembering names and interests, sending personalized information that makes a student feel wanted, and building an emotional connection long before a decision is made. Public districts have every bit as much capacity to do the same. Most just haven't been asked to think about it that way.

Consider a story that has nothing to do with schools at all: a man stops by his neighborhood corner store to grab a few groceries, only to discover the next morning he was overcharged more than $300. He comes back ready for a fight. Instead, the clerk beats him to it — a full refund, a sincere apology, and a bag of groceries, no argument required. That's not just good customer service. That's a business that understood the moment mattered more than the money. 

Schools have that same kind of moment available to them dozens of times a day, but if they're not looking for it, they won't see it.

FREEBIE: Hospitality in public schools isn’t abstract. Access a list of 101 unreasonable hospitality ideas to consider for your school!

ROI = Return on Intention 

CESO Communications sees results when districts do this work well. 

One district that focused specifically on improving the customer experience on its preK and open-enrollment webpages saw traffic jump from roughly 2,300 views to more than 13,000 in a single year — a nearly 500% increase — with pre-K registration page views climbing even more dramatically. Another district paired a modest digital advertising investment with a strategic communications push and generated well over a million dollars in additional state funding from new enrollment. In a third district, a small consulting and advertising investment translated into more than a million dollars in retained and recruited student revenue.

These aren't hypothetical numbers. They're what happens when districts treat enrollment marketing and the hospitality that supports it as infrastructure, not an afterthought.

You don't need a complete overhaul to begin. You need a different lens.

Start by mapping a potential family's journey, start to finish — from the first Google search a prospective parent runs to the moment their child walks the graduation stage. Where are the friction points? Where does the experience go quiet, generic or feel purely transactional? Ask your front office staff how they currently greet a stranger who walks through the door and what questions they constantly get from new families. Pull up your own website and read it the way an anxious, comparing, slightly overwhelmed parent would at midnight. Does it explain outcomes, or just list programs? Does it reassure, or does it just give instructions and wait for the phone to ring?

Small audits like these tend to surface the same thing: most of the friction isn't expensive to fix. It just hasn’t been a focus point, and a little intention and thoughtfulness go a long way.

A New Playbook for a New Reality

The choice to market your schools is gone. In 2026, families have more choices, from private schools to homeschooling to virtual academies to vouchers and more. Whether your state has a highly competitive education environment or not, there is a nationwide push for school privatization that is affecting everyone to some degree, and the districts that used to be able to count on geography alone, simply can’t. Meeting that reality doesn't require abandoning who you are. It requires a strong brand and a strategic marketing plan to make sure every person who interacts with your district walks away feeling like they mattered.

At CESO Communications, we're experienced at helping districts translate that idea into something concrete: audits, campaigns, training and field-tested strategies built specifically for schools. We believe the districts that thrive in the current competitive education landscape won't be the ones with the biggest budgets or fanciest facilities. They'll be the ones willing to get a little unreasonable about how they treat the people they serve.

If that's the kind of work you're ready to do, we'd love to help you get started.

Sharing the Vision

The experts on the CESO Communications team are some of the most sought-after speakers in school PR. Recently, we’ve been sharing at top conferences about applying Guidara’s lessons about hospitality to schools and their marketing efforts. 

If you’re planning a conference, let’s talk about a session.

“‘Lead Unreasonably’ was one of my favorite sessions I attended at NSPRA this year! My team and I attended together and walked away with realistic, actionable steps to help our district stand out. The field guide was a helpful tool to take back to our district and get us started. We even left with a list of customer touch points to review with our school building teams. We were grateful to have learned from the CESO team and can’t wait to see them again at a future session.”

Rebecca Swoboda, APR

Executive Director of Communications and Strategic Planning for Glenview School District 34

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