The role of the school public relations director in collective negotiations as perceived by school public relations directors and superintendents of schools

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine the role of the school public relations director in collective negotiations as perceived by school public relations directors and superintendents of schools. The study also compared perceptions of the role between respondents from states with collective negotiations and those from states without, respondents from states which allow strikes by public school employees and those which do not, among school districts with various size student enrollments, among districts in different regions of the country, and between school districts in which the public relations director is a member of the administrative team and districts in which he/she is not. The population was 566 school public relations directors identified from membership rosters of the National School Public Relations Association and the 566 superintendents of schools who employ them. A survey instrument specifically developed and validated for this study provided 222 usable responses, for 77.89 percent usable return. A Likert scale allowing for agreement, no opinion, or disagreement, was provided for responses to each of thirty-seven role statements. Single-classification analysis of variance was used to compare perceptions of superintendents and public relations directors. Facto ria l analysis of variance was used to test for main and interactive effects of the independent variables (collective negotiations, strikes, size of student enrollment, region of country, membership on administration team) upon the dependent variable (role statements in the survey instrument). Responses of superintendents were significantly different to those of public relations directors in more than fifty percent of the role aspects contained in the survey instrument. Both groups tended to be in agreement with the communications aspects of collective negotiations while being in disagreement with an active involvement in the labor relations processes. Furthermore, findings indicated that the role is not significantly affected by the status of collective negotiations and strikes in a state, the size of the student enrollment of a school district, geographic differences, or membership of the public relations director on the administrative team...