School District honored with Golden Achievement Award for communications

The Shoreline School District has received a 2011 Golden Achievement Award from the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) for communications relating to the nationally-acclaimed Social Experiment last December at Shorecrest and Shorewood High Schools.

The NSPRA Golden Achievement Awards program is one of the most prestigious honors for education public relations. It recognizes exemplary public relations activities, programs and projects in school districts nationwide. The award judges honor outstanding achievement in the four steps of a public relations program - analysis, planning, communication and evaluation. Each entry was judged individually against these awards criteria.

This is the second consecutive year the District has received a Golden Achievement Award from NSPRA. The 2010 award was for communications related to the successful bond issue for modernization/replacement of Shorecrest and Shorewood High Schools.

In The Social Experiment, (link to student videos documenting the experience) more than 600 participating students from both schools attempted to give up their social networks for a week: no texting, online gaming, internet chat or Facebook. The experiment was the brainchild of Shorecrest and Shorewood video production teachers Trent Mitchell and Marty Ballew. Their students created funny movie trailers promoting the experiment and later a joint documentary on the outcome.

District Public Information Officer Craig Degginger coordinated the communications and media relations for The Social Experiment (link to national coverage), resulting in a front-page story in The Seattle Times, coverage on three Seattle television stations, interviews of students and teachers on MSNBC, CNBC and CNN, radio stations and news blogs.

ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer did a story on the experiment and named the students and teachers of Shorecrest and Shorewood as its Persons of the Week on the Friday, December 10 national broadcast.