Before 2024, Davis communicated the way most districts do — inconsistently. Individual schools managed their own websites, their own social accounts, their own messaging. Some told great stories. Many stayed quiet.

The result was a district that looked entirely different depending on which school a family happened to search on a Tuesday night. In an open enrollment environment, that inconsistency isn’t neutral. A neglected website signals a neglected school — regardless of what’s actually happening inside the building.

“We were doing a lot of communicating. But it wasn’t always consistent, and it wasn’t always strategic.”

— Terri Hall, Communication Assistant Director

Davis needed a way to fix this at scale. Not school by school. The system itself had to change.

Most districts facing declining enrollment cut communication budgets. Davis did the opposite — and it started at the top.

Utah is one of the lowest-funded school systems in the country. That context makes what happened next more striking, not less. Superintendent Dr. Dan Linford looked at his district’s enrollment trajectory and made a call that most leaders in his position don’t make.

That conviction cascaded. The communication team grew from four members to eight. A brand initiative launched. Thousands of hours of training followed. None of it happens without a superintendent who understands that visibility is not a luxury — it’s an enrollment strategy.

The objection most districts raise at this point is bandwidth. Eight people for 70,000 students and 94 schools sounds like a lot until you do the math.

“ We are constantly trying to find ways to make sure content is getting to the people that need it.”

— Terri Hall

The answer to the bandwidth problem wasn’t more staff. It was a smarter system.

In 2024, Davis implemented Apptegy’s unified platform. But the technology was only the first layer. What Davis built around it is what makes it a model worth replicating.

The platform collapsed the silos. One post now flows to every channel simultaneously — website, social media, mobile. But the insight Davis brought was recognizing that tools don’t train themselves.

“Water to the end of the row.”

— Chris Williams — on what real communication reach looks like

Over two years the team delivered nearly 3,000 hours of professional development — not to a centralized communications staff, but to the principals, office managers, and school webmasters who are, in practice, the people closest to families. The goal was simple and difficult: make sure information reaches the last person who needs it, not just flow from the top.

Built into the model is something most districts overlook entirely: internal communication always comes first. Before anything goes public, staff are aligned. Administrators understand the context. Office staff know how to answer when parents call.

When a parent walks into any Davis school and asks about a program or policy, they get the same answer. That consistency doesn’t happen by accident. It’s infrastructure.

The Principal Is the Chief Marketing Officer

People don’t buy districts. They buy schools.

That reframe is at the heart of how Davis thinks about communication. The district brand matters, but the school brand is where families actually make their decision. Which means the principal is, whether they know it or not, the chief marketing officer of their building.

Davis made that expectation explicit. Communication teams were built at every school because one person, even a talented one, can’t carry it alone. Every school undergoes a quarterly website audit with specific, actionable feedback. Templates were developed for each school’s identity so that social posts, and website content stay on-brand without requiring design expertise.

“As we are building a brand for a school, we’re also building a brand for the district. We are a family. ”

— Chris Williams

The schools that made this a priority are seeing results. Principals who go door-to-door in new developments, who introduce themselves to incoming families, who treat community presence as part of the job, those schools are seeing success.

The Stat That Changed Everything

Davis surveyed 8,351 parents. One finding reframed how the entire team thinks about their work.

Parents are fifteen times more likely to recommend their child’s school after a positive experience.

Not two times. Not five. Fifteen.

“The parent recommendation statistic was a turning point for us. We realized we needed to amplify those positive experiences and tell those stories to more families.”

— Terri Hall

The team had been focused on reach, getting new families to find Davis. That work mattered. But the fifteen-times stat exposed something more powerful: the most effective enrollment tool wasn’t a website. It was a satisfied parent.

In a choice environment, reputation moves faster than messaging. A family’s decision is often made before they’ve spoken to a single administrator — shaped by a neighbor’s recommendation, a social post from a school across town, a website that answered their question at 9 p.m. without requiring a phone call.

The job of communication shifted. Not just broadcasting information. Amplifying the real experiences that make families stay and tell others.

In April 2026, Davis School District Office of Communication received a Best of State award in Utah for Community Communication. The recognition reflects a system, not a campaign.

Districtwide page views grew from 19.4 million to 72.3 million.

Total users increased from 1.8 million to 4.9 million.

School-level Facebook posts increased 198 percent.

School-level Instagram posts rose 139 percent.

Nearly 3,000 hours of professional development were delivered.

Here’s what makes those numbers meaningful: enrollment didn’t change. Davis didn’t suddenly gain thousands of students.

That candor matters. Because what it reveals is that 72 million page views and 4.9 million users came from people who already existed in the community. They found parents, families, prospective students who simply weren’t finding Davis before. The content was there. The system to drive it consistently district-wide wasn’t.

“We didn’t suddenly have more students. We just had more people actually finding and using our content.”

— Raini Tucker, District Webmaster

Davis earned that visibility by listening first. Before rebuilding their website, they surveyed more than 8,000 parents. Their goal was not to ask how they felt about the district, but to understand what they were actually searching for. What questions they couldn’t find answers to. Then they built around the findings.

“We stopped guessing. We built around what families actually needed.”

— Raini Tucker

At the same time the digital infrastructure was being rebuilt, Davis launched “Brand Possible”, a district-wide effort to define what Davis actually stands for.

Five messaging pillars emerged: student safety and wellbeing, academic excellence, character, culture and community, opportunities and enrichment, and facilities and infrastructure. Every piece of content the district produces now tries to connect to one of them. A parent reading across a dozen school websites begins to feel, even if they can’t articulate why, that Davis is a district with a coherent identity.

At the center sits one idea: Hometown Choice. The phrase came from the superintendent, who kept returning to a single question: how do you make a district of 70,000 students still feel like your neighborhood school?

The answer is in the substance. The Catalyst Center for career and technical education. Fine arts from kindergarten through graduation. Davis Connect for flexible learning. Language immersion in French, Spanish, and Chinese. Dedicated support for military families and 84 of 94 schools are now Purple Star designated.

To bring it to life, Davis built a video series — “Reasons to Choose Davis” — that lives directly on the district’s About page. Titles like “Fun Classrooms,” “A Place to Belong,” and “Unmatched Experiences” aren’t creative flourishes. They’re brand statements, each mapped to a messaging pillar.

Families don’t want to be told what a district offers. They want to see it. Video closes the gap between claim and proof and gives current families language for conversations no advertising budget can manufacture.

The Davis team doesn’t describe Apptegy as a platform. They describe it as a partner. The distinction comes up every time someone on the team is asked about the relationship.

“I’ve never seen a company go to the extent Apptegy does to build relationships. Until you experience it, you really have no idea what that’s like.”

— Chris Williams

Weekly check-ins. Ongoing strategy conversations. Real investment in whether the communication is working, not just whether the platform is running.

“It’s not just checking boxes. It feels like they’re invested in what we’re doing.”

— Raini Tucker

When the Davis team attended the Apptegy SchoolCEO conference in Little Rock, they didn’t just bring communication staff members. They brought two school directors. Leaders with the authority to make things happen back home.

“They are like our biggest cheerleaders now,” Hall says. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when a partnership is built around outcomes, not transactions.

Davis isn’t finished. Three projects are active right now.

First, the team is cleaning up district web pages using analytics, removing content that isn’t earning its place, simplifying navigation, and treating every point of friction as a trust problem.

Second, they’re rebuilding their “Teach.Work.Grow in Davis” site into a full recruitment and retention tool, because attracting great teachers is an enrollment strategy too.

Third, and this is where it gets forward-looking, they’re studying how AI tools interpret their digital presence.The next family might not find Davis through Google. They might ask ChatGPT. What comes back — accurate or not — will shape their decision before they’ve visited a single website. Davis is getting ahead of that.

The Bottom Line

Platform. Training. Brand. Internal alignment. All of it connected. All of it intentional. And all of it measurable: 72 million page views, 4.9 million users, a Best of State award, and a district that now competes for families instead of hoping they show up.

ALL school districts have countless compelling stories: the innovative teaching, the exclusive learning opportunities in every building. The moments that would make a hesitant family stop scrolling and start paying attention. What schools are missing is the system to surface them consistently, at scale, before a family makes a choice to leave.

The question isn't whether your district needs a system like this. It's whether you build one before the gap gets too wide to close and before the district down the road does it first.

Apptegy exists for exactly this moment. See what it looks like for your district at apptegy.com.