KSBA’s popular daily electronic news service, eNews, has grown over the past eight years from a few hundred subscriber/recipients to the current nearly 3,500. And a pair of changes to the service will enable even more people to keep in the loop about what’s making news in Kentucky elementary and secondary schools.
The first new option will be for retired educators who may subscribe to the service at a reduced fee of $100 (compared with the regular $300 rate).
“We’ve had requested for a few years to have a way for people whose districts subscribe to the service to be able to continue getting the daily headlines in retirement,” said Brad Hughes, KSBA’s director of Member Support and Communications Services. “The $300 rate, which is good for up to 30 active educator recipients, serves districts, universities, educational cooperatives and other groups well enough, but the fee was rather steep for just one person. Because our agreement with media outlets to have a limit on recipients per subscription, we couldn’t just open the doors for everyone getting the service and going into retirement.
“Within a week of offering the reduced rate to currently subscribing superintendents who are retiring, we had almost 10 takers, so the interest seems to be there,” Hughes said, adding that retired subscribers won’t count against the 30-limit of their former districts. The service is available to any retired educator as a single recipient and may not be forwarded or otherwise shared with nonsubscribers, in keeping with the regular service rules.
Meanwhile, the KSBA Board of Directors voted at its June quarterly meeting to automatically have the eNews Service distributed to all local board of education members in districts that subscribe to the service.
Under eNews guidelines, board members are already eligible to receive the service without counting against the subscription limit of 30 recipients. Currently, 163 districts subscribe to the service but the board member recipient count is slightly more than 400.
“At a recent board meeting, some of the KSBA directors felt the service is of such value to local leaders that the headlines should automatically go to all board members of subscribing districts, and directed the staff to begin adding those nonrecipient board members to the daily email blasts as soon as possible,” Hughes said. Districts won’t have to take any action as association staff will use the KSBA database to make the directive happen.