Public Affairs

Public Affairs and Communications

The Public Affairs Department provides expertise in strategic communications, media relations, social media, crisis communication, and content creation. It is our goal to ensure families, staff, community members and the media receive accurate and timely information.

The team helps:

Share information about our schools and students through multiple forms of media and in many languages.
Build capacity for school and central staff to share information through newsletters, websites, social media, phone messages, and community gatherings.
Provide clear and timely crisis communications during inclement weather, natural disasters, or other emergencies.

Media Relations

Media relations: for those professional news organizations needing assistance, contact media relations.

Photo and Video Consent Release Form

This form should be used for any events where student faces may be featured in photos or videos to be shared publicly. Examples include news media invited to a school event, district staff (SPS TV and/or Communications) visiting a school to take photos/video for the web or social media, students attending an event outside of or at a school hosted by an organization that may use photos with student faces for marketing purposes, etc.

Please send signed forms to SPSMedia@seattleschools.org (scanned documents are fine) and include the name and date of event. Public Affairs will archive the forms.

Generally outside organizations have their own forms, which are OK to use instead of ours. (These forms don’t need to be sent to SPS Media)

Communications Tools

The district utilizes a tool called SchoolMessenger to contact families with important reminders and urgent information. Learn more about how to manage family communication preferences.

Urgent Communications

Seattle Public Schools prioritizes student safety. It is our goal to prevent emergencies from happening, therefore all lethal or potentially lethal statements, whether verbal or written (including electronic) are to be taken seriously and investigated. Because all emergencies, such as natural disasters can’t be prevented, we also want to be prepared to respond effectively.