If your district has a high school, you’re probably about to watch another class of graduates walk across the stage, toss their mortarboards and emerge into the wider world. For many educators, this can be one of the happiest times of year—but also one of the most emotional. Some of these students have spent 12 years or more building relationships in your schools, and now it’s time to say goodbye.
Or is it?
Consider this: Your former students, including those who just walked out the door, have the potential to be your greatest assets. They’ll carry your district with them into their careers and their communities—and if they start families of their own, they might even find their way back to your enrollment office. So graduation shouldn’t be the end of their connection to your district. Instead, it should be the beginning of a new phase in their ongoing relationship with your schools. But how do you make sure your new alumni stay in touch, champion your schools, and even enroll their own kids in the future?
Give them something worth coming back to. Alumni stay connected when you give them a reason to. That means offering real value—visibility, community, and opportunities to contribute. Keep your graduates involved in your district community through an alumni newsletter. Consider offering an alumni discount at theatre productions or sporting events. When your former students feel remembered and valued, that translates directly into advocacy.
Spotlight their success. When your graduates accomplish something amazing, celebrate it! Feature alumni spotlights on your website and social media, or spearhead an award for outstanding alumni. Stories do double duty: They honor your graduates and remind prospective families that your district produces quality people.
Put them to work. Alumni make exceptional volunteers, mentors and advocates precisely because they've lived the experience. Have a former student in a prestigious engineering program? Invite them back to talk to students in your engineering career pathway. Need volunteers to help coach girls’ volleyball? Why not tap your former volleyball stars? Keeping your graduates connected to students will help them remember the experience they had as students—and that will keep your relationship strong.
The students leaving your district this spring aren't closing the book on your schools. They're carrying stories of their time there. Your job is to make sure they keep telling those stories.
One question for you
We're hard at work on our next edition of SchoolCEO, all about hospitality and customer service.
So we'd like to know: What’s one customer service practice you’ve implemented that actually made a measurable difference—and what did it change?
Email us at editor@schoolceo.com and let us know! Your response might show up in the pages of our Fall 2026 issue.
Two resources to help
To keep in touch with all segments of your community—including those recent alumni—you might need to level up your communications infrastructure. . On June 18 at 12 p.m. Central, frequent SchoolCEO contributor Greg Turchetta will show you how to move away from one-way broadcasts, siloed channels, inconsistent branding and reactive crisis management toward strategies that actually work for you and your families. Register for the webinar here.
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a global nonprofit association dedicated to helping institutions achieve their missions—whether through alumni relations, communications, marketing or development. While they provide resources for higher education as well, they have plenty of strategies and case studies for K-12 alumni engagement on their website. Check them out here.
Three ideas to get you thinking
“I think the success of any school can be measured by the contribution that the alumni make to our national life.” —President John F. Kennedy
“Each piece of a quilt’s fabric has its own unique shape and character, all combining to make one interconnected piece of art. But weaving those composite pieces together also takes time, dedication and attention to detail. Can you see where we’re going with this? Your district’s story is the quilt, and its fabric is made of the students, families and community members you serve. Each of your advocates is a distinct patch on that quilt, and the threads that tie them together must be intentional, thoughtful and—more than anything—long-lasting.” —SchoolCEO Writer Corey Whaley in “Keeping in Touch”
“The beautiful thing about spotlighting people—not just current students, but previous students or even community members—is that they share it with their family members and their family members share it. So it continues to widen that net." —District Communications Specialist Joy McMillan (Hemlock Public School District, MI) in “Are Your Alumni All In?”