- December 15, 2025
David Voss, president of Sarasota-based communications firm Voss & Associates, presented to the Flagler County School Board Tuesday, April 17, about restructuring its communications strategy.
“There’s a gap between perception and reality in Flagler County,” Voss told the board. “If we can simply bring the perception to the reality, we’ll be good. We want to close that gap.”
According to Voss, “insiders” who know the school system well, love it. But then there’s a much broader group that remains indifferent or negative toward it.
“You need the public to support you,” Voss said. “But you can’t reach everybody by the spray-and-pray technique.”
He suggested drilling down on their target audiences — a practice he said would also be helpful for communicating with parents. If a student is in theater and his after-school session will be canceled, a parent should be called about that, he said.
He also suggested working more aggressively with the media; redesigning and modernizing the district logo, then rebranding it on hats and coffee mugs; increasing family and community support; and building a better reputation through a concise and consistent “grand message” or slogan.
Other tips included launching an e-newsletter and becoming more active with letters to newspaper editors and spots on local radio shows.
“We have to significantly move from reactive to proactive,” Voss told the board, “where we initiate and create things.”
According to Superintendent Janet Valentine, staff will now prioritize Voss’ findings and figure which of his initiatives can be accomplished in-house and which will need to be contracted. Media training, for example, is something that would need to be contracted.
