About NSPRA
Become a Member
Member Mondays are designed to strengthen connections, empower NSPRA members and support professional growth through engaging, interactive sessions.
Join us on Zoom every Monday at 1 p.m. ET for a variety of conversations, resource sharing and problem-solving tailored to school PR professionals. Dates are subject to change due to calendar conflicts or federal holidays.
Build your school PR network in a relaxed setting. Connect with colleagues, discuss career topics and find support from peers who understand your challenges and celebrate your successes.
Learn More and Register for K12PRMingle
Discuss hot topics in school communications, brainstorm solutions and share best practices on news and issues impacting school districts. These conversations provide a safe space for collaboration and are not recorded, but notes will be shared with registrants.
Registration for K12PRSolution Coming Soon
Discover and exchange favorite tools, templates and tech from your school PR peers. Inspired by the NSPRA Tech Slams of previous years, this session is all about practical takeaways—plus a little fun along the way.
Registration for K12PRShare Coming Soon
Engage in a structured discussion on key school communications topics with 5–7 thought-provoking questions shared in advance. These sessions aren’t recorded, but notes will be provided to registrants. (Learn more about the history of K12PRChat below.)
Learn More and Register for K12PRChat
After the NSPRA 2015 Seminar in Nashville, then Blackboard Senior Manager of Product Development Dane Dellenbach approached NSPRA member Kristin Magette, APR, with an idea for extending the excitement and networking of the Seminar.
Being on social media was becoming more and more prevalent and necessary for school districts, and the educational technology world had been involved in “chats” on Twitter for a few years…so why not #SchoolPR?
Magette was all in for Dellenbach's idea and they wasted no time launching #K12PRChat, with the first hour-long chat debuting on July 21, 2015. The topic was recapping the NSPRA Seminar.
Early on, the chats happened every two weeks, but once the pandemic hit in 2020-2021, the team of school PR pros now carrying the #K12PRChat torch scaled the chats back to once a month to preserve everyone’s mental bandwidth.
For the first few years at each NSPRA Seminar, participants were eligible to win a Chattie award. In 2017, Chattie recipient Joshua Sauer, APR, created a way for participants to help their peers attend the NSPRA Seminar by creating the #ROAD2NSPRA campaign. The campaign was not only a hashtag, but a hat that was mailed across the country to members where they could take photos and showcase their communities. At the end of its two-month journey, the hat ended up at the Seminar location in the hands of the NSPRA president, which in its inaugural year was San Antonio with Julie Thannum, APR.
As the "Road" gained steam, swag was available for purchase, and proceeds from those sales went to the NSPRA Foundation, which provides scholarships for members to attend the Seminar.
#K12PRChat didn’t stop at chats, awards, swag and hats. The next step in helping more school PR professionals to attend the NSPRA Seminar? A designated scholarship.
Sauer and Cathy Kedjidjian, APR, both of whom had served as NSPRA’s Vice President at Large of Communications and Technology, led the efforts in the creation of an NSPRA scholarship dedicated to sending a worthy “chatter” to the annual Seminar, completely funded by member donations and swag purchases. The first scholarships went to Thomas Gould of Michigan and Andrew Robinson of Virginia and were used at the 2021 Seminar in New Orleans due to the cancellation of the 2020 Seminar.
Kedjidjian is also focused on personal wellness, so the next grassroots efforts of members focused on #K12PRFit and a #K12PR5K, which first launched in Washington, D.C. at the 2019 Seminar.
In August of 2022, Kedjidjian, by then the NSPRA President-elect and #K12PRChat leader, practiced what she preached about personal wellness. Her schedule as a school PR pro and leader of NSPRA meant the chat needed other voices to carry it forward. New NSPRA Manager of Professional Development and Member Services Melissa McConnell made the suggestion that NSPRA becomes the new leader of the chats, with continued input from a team of school PR pros who treasure the chat and its history.
A new era began. Since August 2022, NSPRA promotes #K12PRChat and continues to host conversations monthly. In 2024, the chat transitioned from being held on Twitter/X in the evenings to being held on Zoom during the workday, allowing more #schoolPR pros to participate on a face-to-face platform. In March 2025, K12PRChat morphed again. The Chat has dropped the hashtag and added became a weekly Zoom meeting for NSPRA members to network, problem solve, share ideas and participate in the "original" version of the chat.
Each year, participants of the K12PRChats throughout the year meet up at the NSPRA Seminar to mix and mingle in-person. Above are photos from the meet up at NSRPA 2022 in Chicago.