With enrollment having declined by 2,000 students since the 2024-2025 school year, Lee County Schools has embarked on a marketing campaign.

At a school board workshop this week, communications spokesman Rob Spicker outlined the department’s recent and future tactics.

"One of the things that we're doing this school year is going to be all about student enrollment," he said. "It's going to be a constant theme through the school year, both in terms of retaining the students we have and recruiting students that we don't have in the district.

"The school funding [is] tied obviously directly to the enrollment number, the number of students on campus."

Public schools around the state have increasingly lost students to private, charter and home schooling, particularly with the expansion of voucher availability, which made virtually every family eligible for about $8,000 per child to attend a non-public school.

"We're in a position now where we have to constantly be marketing ourselves to our community, to our parents, to bring them into our schools."

The communications department has created a new home page, to “really sell ourselves as a district to those parents who are coming into Lee County,” Spicker said. It includes a highlight reel, access to parent and employee portals, a message from the superintendent, and most notably, multiple opportunities to enroll. Additional social media plans were announced.

Last year, letters and postcards went to all registered voters in an enrollment campaign. The approximate $65,000 cost drew criticism from the community. When board member Melisa Giovannelli asked, Spicker said there were no plans to send additional letters.

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