On May 13, Grow Schools hosted Enrollment Edge: Marketing Strategies for Fall 2026 — a live workshop covering two of the highest-leverage areas in enrollment marketing: social media that actually reaches families, and a homepage that turns visitors into applicants. Content Strategist Jesse Foss and Brand and UX Design Consultant Niki Blaker led the homepage portion, with practical frameworks and live audits that school leaders could apply the same day.

Here is what we covered.

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The Truth About Social Media in 2026

We opened with a poll asking which platform schools are using most for marketing. The answers were spread across Facebook, Instagram, email, and websites — and that spread tells its own story.

The honest truth about social media right now: no single platform is driving qualified leads on its own. Families are not making enrollment decisions because of one post on one channel. What actually works is a combination of consistent organic content that builds awareness and trust, paired with paid advertising that puts your school in front of families who do not already know you.

Where to put your time:

Facebook and Instagram are still your foundation — but for awareness, not conversion. These platforms help families recognize your school and feel familiar with it before they ever visit your website. Paid advertising on both platforms works, and it does not have to be expensive. Boosting a post for $5 to $10 a day can meaningfully extend your reach.

TikTok is worth exploring if your team has the capacity. It is especially effective for showing the personality of your school — what a typical day looks like, what your kids are excited about, what makes your community different.

The bottom line: go where your families actually are, not where the headlines tell you to be.

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Content That Connects

The most effective enrollment content does two things in roughly a 60/40 balance. Sixty percent of what you post should be brand and community content — showing who you are, what your culture feels like, what families can expect. Forty percent should be enrollment-focused content that invites families to take action.

Both types work together. Trust built through community content is what makes families respond to enrollment-focused content when it appears.

Content that tends to perform:

• Student testimonials in video form
• Day-in-the-life content that shows your school, not a polished version of it
• Virtual tours that feel authentic rather than produced
• Parent voices talking about their experience

Community partnerships are one of the most underused tools in school marketing. Mission-aligned organizations in your area — youth programs, libraries, local businesses, neighborhood groups — already have audiences that overlap with yours. Tag them in relevant posts, ask them to share your content, and look for opportunities to collaborate on events. Their networks become your networks.

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Platform Quick Wins

A few specific things schools can do immediately:

On Facebook: Post at 7–9 AM or 5–7 PM when families are most active. Video content performs significantly better than static images — up to three times better. Boosting posts for five to ten dollars a day is one of the highest-return investments available.

On Instagram: Use Stories for daily moments and Reels for reach. Reels between 30 and 60 seconds tend to perform best. Organize your Highlights so new visitors can immediately find what they need: Tour, Programs, Events, Testimonials.

One event, five posts: Any event your school hosts can generate content before, during, and after. A single tour day, open house, or student showcase can become an announcement post, a behind-the-scenes story, a video highlight, a parent quote, and a follow-up recap. You do not need more events — you need to get more out of the ones you already have.

The easiest win of all: Set up an instant auto-response for every inquiry form submission. When a family reaches out, they are in a moment of active interest. An immediate response — even an automated one that confirms receipt and sets expectations — keeps that interest alive. A delayed response loses it.

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Measuring What Matters

Before moving into the homepage section, we paused on a point worth sitting with:

Followers are not enrollments. Likes are not applications. Shares are not inquiries.

Vanity metrics feel good and measure almost nothing. The numbers that matter are inquiry form submissions, tour sign-ups, open house attendance, and ultimately applications. When you are evaluating whether your social media is working, those are the questions to ask.

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Your Homepage is Where it all Lands

Every piece of social media content, every paid ad, every community partnership eventually points somewhere. For most families, that somewhere is your homepage.

Jesse and Niki walked through what makes a homepage work — and what gets in the way.

The numbers: Between 40 and 60 percent of all website traffic lands on a school’s homepage. Once a visitor arrives, you have about eight seconds before they decide to stay or go. That is not a long window, but it is enough — if your homepage is doing its job.

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The Three Jobs Your Homepage Has To Do

Trust. Families need to see that your school is real, active, and worth their time. Real photos of your kids and your building. Recent news or events. Parent testimonials. Credentials that are easy to find.

Differentiation. Why your school, and not the one down the street? Your homepage needs to answer that clearly — not in a tagline, but in specific language about what families and kids will actually experience.

Conversion. Families who are ready to act should not have to work to find out how to apply or schedule a tour. The path forward needs to be visible from the moment they land on your page.

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The 5-second Test

Attendees pulled up their own homepages during the session and tested whether a first-time visitor could answer four questions in five seconds:

• What grades do you serve?
• Where are you located?
• How do I schedule a tour?
• What makes you different?

For a lot of schools in the room, the honest answer was: not quite. Location buried in the footer. Differentiators on an About page two clicks away. A call-to-action that requires scrolling to find.

These are fixable. And most of them do not require a full redesign.

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What a Great Homepage Includes

Niki walked through the seven sections that belong on every effective charter school homepage:

1. A hero section with a clear call to action
2. Social proof — testimonials, stats, or awards
3. What makes your school different, with three or four specific differentiators
4. Programs or curriculum highlights
5. Latest news or events showing your school is active
6. A second call to action
7. A footer with all key links

The hero section is where most schools have the most room to improve. The components: a headline that says what you do and who you serve, a subheadline that speaks to something a family actually cares about, a visual that shows real kids rather than stock photography, a primary call to action above the fold, and a secondary call to action for families who want to keep reading before committing.

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Headlines That Do the Work

Jesse spent time on one of the highest-leverage pieces of copy on any homepage: the headline.

Most school headlines fall into a familiar trap. They are either too generic — “Welcome to Our School” — or aspirational in a way that does not give families any real information.

The strongest headlines do two things at once. They say what you do and who you serve. Something like “K-8 STEM Education Preparing Tomorrow’s Innovators in [City]” gives a family everything they need in one sentence.

Attendees wrote three headline variations for their own school and shared favorites in the chat. The exercise made clear how much specificity matters — the headlines that landed were the ones that named a grade range, a community, or a concrete outcome.

Jesse also shared a word bank framework to help schools find the right language: an action verb that describes what you do for kids, a phrase that captures who your kids become, and a distinct ingredient — the thing only your school can claim.

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How Families Make Decisions

Niki and Jesse shared a framework for understanding the four ways families process information when they visit a school’s homepage.

The Scanner is fast and data-driven. They want numbers up front, bullet points, and a page they can move through quickly.

The Gut-Feeler decides fast based on feeling. They need strong imagery, bold copy, and photos of real people.

The Researcher is thorough. They want FAQs, detailed program pages, and credentials they can verify.

The Storyteller needs to feel connected before they can decide. They respond to testimonials, video, and language that explains why your school exists.

A well-built homepage can work for all four types. The key is making sure each visitor can find what they need without having to dig.

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Good Homepages Get Found by AI Too

One section that prompted strong engagement in the chat: the sections you build for families — your differentiators, your FAQs, your stats, your location — are exactly what AI tools pull when recommending schools.

Families are increasingly asking tools like ChatGPT to help them find schools. If your homepage answers those questions clearly, you are ahead of schools that bury that information. If it does not, you may not show up at all.

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Mobile is Not Optional

Between 60 and 70 percent of school website traffic is mobile. That means the majority of families visiting your homepage are doing it on their phones, often in a quick moment between other things.

What that requires in practice: buttons large enough to tap easily, text that is readable without zooming, and pages that load in under three seconds. A homepage that works beautifully on a desktop but is difficult to navigate on a phone is losing families before they read a word.

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Your Action Plan

The session closed with a roadmap organized by time horizon.

This week: Optimize your social profiles and bio. Set up an auto-response for inquiry forms. Schedule two posts. Update your homepage headline and subheadline. Replace any stock photos with real images of your kids and building. Make your primary call to action more visible.

This month: Tag three community partners in relevant content. Boost your best-performing post. Organize your Instagram Highlights. Reorganize your homepage sections. Add or update testimonials. Simplify your navigation.

This quarter: Plan a professional photography day. Collect video testimonials. Complete a full mobile optimization review.

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Get the Resources

The recording is available here.

If you want a fresh set of eyes on your school’s homepage or enrollment marketing, reach out at hello@growschools.com.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best social media platform for charter school enrollment marketing?

There is no single platform that works for every school. Facebook and Instagram are the most reliable starting points — they are where most families already spend time, and paid advertising on both platforms is effective and affordable. TikTok is worth exploring if your team has the capacity to create short video content consistently. The most important thing is to show up where your families actually are, not where the headlines say you should be.

How much should a school spend on social media advertising?

You do not need a large budget to see results. Boosting posts on Facebook or Instagram for five to ten dollars a day can meaningfully extend your reach to families who do not already know your school. Start small, see what performs, and increase from there.

What is the difference between organic content and paid advertising?

Organic content — posts, stories, reels — builds trust and familiarity with families over time. Paid advertising gets your school in front of families who have never heard of you. Both matter. Organic content alone rarely drives enough new inquiries, and paid advertising without a strong organic presence gives families nothing to explore once they find you.

How do I know if my social media is actually working?

Focus on the numbers that connect to enrollment: inquiry form submissions, tour sign-ups, open house attendance, and applications. Follower counts and likes are not reliable indicators of whether your marketing is reaching the right families or moving them toward action.

What should be on a charter school homepage?

An effective charter school homepage includes a hero section with a clear call to action, social proof such as testimonials and achievement data, a section explaining what makes your school different, program or curriculum highlights, recent news or events, a second call to action, and a footer with key links. Every section should be easy to find and read on a mobile device.

What is the 5-second test?

The 5-second test is a quick way to evaluate whether your homepage is doing its job. Pull up your homepage and ask: can a first-time visitor answer these four questions within five seconds — what grades you serve, where you are located, how to schedule a tour, and what makes your school different? If the answer to any of those is no, that is your starting point.

How do I write a better headline for my school’s homepage?

The strongest homepage headlines do two things: they say what you do and who you serve. Avoid generic phrases like “Welcome to Our School” or aspirational language that does not give families real information. A headline like “K-8 STEM Education Preparing Tomorrow’s Innovators in [City]” tells a family exactly what to expect. Lead with your grade range, your community, or a concrete outcome — something specific to your school that another school could not claim.

Why does mobile optimization matter for enrollment?

Between 60 and 70 percent of school website traffic comes from mobile devices. Most families are finding your school on their phones, often in a quick moment between other things. If your homepage is hard to navigate on a small screen, slow to load, or requires zooming to read, families will leave before they learn anything about your school.

How does a good homepage affect AI search results?

When families use AI tools to search for schools, those tools pull from publicly available information on your website. Clear, well-organized content — your differentiators, location, grade levels, FAQs, and stats — is exactly what AI uses to recommend schools. If that information is easy to find on your homepage, you are more likely to appear in AI-generated recommendations.

Where can I get help with my school’s enrollment marketing?

Grow Schools works with charter schools on enrollment marketing, facilities financing, and working capital. If you want a fresh set of eyes on your homepage or enrollment strategy, reach out at hello@growschools.com or visit growschools.com to explore available resources.

Sometimes the financial conversations nobody wants to have are usually the most important ones. Budgets, cash ratios, debt service, reserves — these aren’t glamorous topics. But they are the difference between a school that survives a rough patch and one that doesn’t.

At Grow Schools’ recent School Success Trifecta webinar, I talked about financial health not just as a compliance exercise, but as a genuine leadership tool. Here’s what I want every charter leader to take away.

The Numbers That Actually Matter

When I assess a school’s financial health, I focus on a few key indicators. The most important is your defensive interval — essentially, if no more money came in starting today, how long could you keep the lights on and make payroll? The industry standard is at least 3 months. If you’re below that, you’re operating without a safety net.

I also look at your cash ratio and how your expenses track against revenue throughout the year. In California, it’s common for expenses to outpace revenue for much of the school year. That’s not necessarily alarming — but it means you need to know when your cash crunch months are coming and plan for them. One school we worked with was caught off guard when delayed grants and tax credits collided with winter break. A short-term cash flow solution helped them through it, but the better outcome is never being surprised in the first place.

Multi-Year Budgeting Changes Everything

One of the most impactful shifts a charter leader can make is expanding from an annual budget to a multi-year budget. Most states require you to submit budget projections anyway — but there’s a difference between doing it as a compliance exercise and actually using it as a management tool.

When your board can see the financial picture across two or three years, decisions look different. That staff raises you’re considering? Across a single year, it might look manageable. Across three years, it might raise serious sustainability questions. A one-time stipend might be the smarter move. These are the kinds of conversations multi-year budgeting makes possible.

It also gives you a framework for growth planning. If you’re thinking about expanding your enrollment or your facility footprint, you need to be able to model what that looks like over time — not just in the year you make the investment.

Signs You’re Ready to Grow

Growth readiness isn’t just about enthusiasm or wait lists. It’s about financial position. Here’s what I look for:

1. You have adequate cash flow to weather the costs that come with growth. Adding students means adding teachers, and depending on your state, you may need to spend before the funding catches up. You need runway for that.
2. Your facility costs are proportionate. Charter schools generally shouldn’t spend more than 15% of annual revenue on rent or debt service. If you’re above that, expansion will only make it harder.
3. You’re retaining the students you already have. This one surprises people, but retention is your single biggest enrollment lever. It’s far less expensive to keep a family than to replace one.

Don’t Go It Alone

Trying to lead a facilities project without experienced partners is one of the most common and costly errors in this space. At my own charter school in Colorado, we were fortunate to be included in a bond measure that funded a significant construction project. We partnered with an architect, a contractor, and an owner’s rep — and we even invited someone from our authorizer to sit on our RFP process. They felt ownership. They stayed informed. And the project went smoothly because the right people were at the table from the beginning.

There’s never a perfect time to grow. But there is a right way to do it — and it starts with knowing your numbers, building your reserves, and finding partners who’ve done it before.

About the Author

Kristin Nowak is an experienced consultant and former charter school leader with extensive experience supporting charter schools across California, Colorado, Nevada, Tennessee, and Texas since 2014. As Executive Vice President of Strategic Management at Charter School Management Corporation (CSMC), Kristin leads the organization’s sales, business development, marketing, and expansion efforts, helping to grow CSMC’s impact and reach within the charter school sector.  With a strong background as a former charter leader, educator, and administrator, as well as a management consultant, Kristin leverages her financial and strategic expertise to guide schools through complex fiscal challenges and regulatory requirements. 

Kristin holds a BS in Business Administration/Finance from the University of Southern California (USC), as well as an MA in Education from USC’s Rossier School of Education. She received her Administrator’s Certification through Johns Hopkins graduate certificate program and has also completed graduate-level work at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Kristin’s education, leadership experience, and strategic vision make her uniquely qualified to drive growth and innovation in the charter school finance and operations space.

Schools planning expansion face countless strategic decisions—where to add capacity, how to staff new programs, when to open additional campuses. But one critical element often gets overlooked until problems emerge: compensation strategy.

When compensation planning lags behind growth, schools encounter predictable challenges. Uneven salaries across campuses create resentment. Unclear pathways for advancement leave talented educators wondering about their futures. Critical leaders leave during growth phases—exactly when you need them most.

Having worked with numerous schools navigating expansion, I’ve observed that the schools achieving the most sustainable growth are those that think strategically about compensation from the beginning. They build pay systems designed to evolve alongside their expansion rather than systems that quickly become obsolete.

How Schools Outgrow Their Compensation Systems

Growth exposes the limitations of compensation structures that worked fine at smaller scale. This happens in several predictable ways.

New Roles Without Homes

As you expand and add schools or programs, you create roles that didn’t exist before—perhaps a managing director position or a multi-campus coordinator. Suddenly you need job levels you’ve never had, and you need to determine what these roles are worth in the market to set appropriate pay. Without a structure that accommodates these roles, schools make ad-hoc decisions that create inconsistency and confusion about how compensation works.

Unclear Role Placement

Even when you’re not creating entirely new positions, expansion often means adding roles you’re unsure how to place within your existing structure. Is this new position at the coordinator level or the manager level? What’s the market value? How does it compare to similar roles already in your organization? Without clear frameworks, these decisions become subjective and vulnerable to the influence of whoever negotiates most effectively rather than what’s fair and sustainable.

Unrecognized Additional Duties

Growth typically means existing staff take on expanded responsibilities—leading cross-campus initiatives, mentoring new hires, coordinating expanded programs. How do you recognize and reward these contributions? Without thoughtful stipend structures or role progression frameworks, schools either under-compensate people taking on critical growth work, or they create inconsistent recognition that feels arbitrary to staff.

The challenge isn’t that these situations arise—they’re natural consequences of growth. The problem is when schools address them reactively rather than proactively, creating compensation decisions that feel rushed, inconsistent, and disconnected from any coherent strategy.

Building for Your Future Self

The most important principle in growth-ready compensation planning is this: build systems that meet your future self, not just your current reality.

If you’re planning to grow from $8 million in revenue with 80 staff to $20 million with 160 staff over three years, you need a compensation program designed for that future organization, not your current size.

Why Future-Focused Planning Matters

When schools build compensation systems only for their current state, they quickly outgrow those structures. This forces reactive decision-making—creating exceptions, making rushed adjustments, implementing inconsistent solutions. These reactive decisions erode staff trust. When people see exceptions being made without clear rationale, when compensation decisions feel arbitrary or rushed, they lose confidence in the system and in leadership.

Market Parameters Shift With Growth

One critical aspect many schools overlook: market parameters change as you grow. Your size, budget, and scope all influence what roles are worth in the market—particularly for leadership positions.

Frontline teacher salaries don’t typically shift dramatically when a school network grows. But executive salaries do. An executive director leading a single 400-student school and an executive director leading a three-campus, 1,200-student network operate at different scopes and should be compensated accordingly.

The last thing you want is critical leaders leaving during a growth phase because their compensation didn’t evolve alongside their expanding responsibilities and the organization’s growth. Planning ahead—looking at what comparable organizations at your projected future size pay their executives—positions you to retain your leadership team throughout expansion.

Balancing Three Critical Levers

Sustainable compensation strategy during growth requires balancing three levers: market competitiveness, internal equity, and financial sustainability.

The Tension Between Levers

These three elements exist in tension. Pushing hard on one lever shifts where others must fall: being highly market competitive might strain financial sustainability; prioritizing financial sustainability might compromise market competitiveness; bringing in new staff at market rates might create internal equity issues with current staff.

The goal isn’t perfection on all three—it’s finding the right balance for your specific organization and being intentional about trade-offs.

Market Competitiveness

Research where pay sits in the market to understand what being competitive actually means. This involves identifying benchmark organizations (similar size, sector, location) and comparing your compensation for equivalent roles. Pay particular attention to growth-critical positions and areas where talent is hardest to find. You may need to be more competitive in some areas than others based on strategic priorities.

Internal Equity

One of the most painful and trust-eroding situations schools face during growth: “New folks are coming in and they’re paid more than I am, and I’ve been here longer.”

This scenario plays out repeatedly when schools focus exclusively on market competitiveness without attending to internal relationships. You bring in new staff at current market rates, but your experienced, long-tenured educators were hired years ago at lower rates and haven’t received increases that keep pace. The result: less experienced new hires earn more than your most valuable, experienced staff. This destroys trust and drives attrition of exactly the people you most need during expansion.

Internal equity requires regularly auditing how people in similar roles with similar experience are compensated across your organization, then addressing gaps systematically.

Financial Sustainability

Even the best compensation strategy fails if it’s not financially sustainable. You must be realistic about what your budget can support not just this year, but as you grow into your projected future state.

This is where hard trade-offs often emerge. You may need to be at or above market for growth-critical roles while staying closer to market in areas where hiring is easier. You might use targeted stipends for high-need positions rather than across-the-board salary increases. The key is making these trade-offs intentionally, communicating them clearly, and ensuring they align with your stated compensation philosophy.

Growth as Opportunity

School growth creates genuine opportunities to invest strategically in your people. When you build compensation systems grounded in clear philosophy, anchored to competitive market rates, and designed for fairness across all roles, you can attract needed talent while rewarding educators already doing incredible work.

Strategic compensation during growth isn’t about cutting costs—it’s about investing wisely so everyone is paid what they’re worth, trust in leadership is maintained, and your most valuable asset (your people) stays engaged and committed through the expansion journey.

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About the Author

Jennifer Svendsen, PhD, is a Partner at Edgility, bringing over nine years of experience in consulting and human resources. With a background in cancer research, she leverages her research and analytical skills to deliver best-in-class talent equity practices for her clients.

In her role at Edgility, Jennifer is dedicated to cultivating meaningful client relationships and driving research and development of first-rate compensation and talent programs. She engages with her clients through a collaborative and empathetic approach, ensuring their unique needs are met with tailored, data-driven solutions.

Reach out to her at jsvendsen@edgilitytalent.com