Parent Marketing & Communications Associate

Join Poly Prep's Advancement Team!

Come to Poly Prep Country Day School ("Poly Prep") as the Parent Marketing & Communications Associate. Join an imaginative, exciting, and innovative Advancement team at one of New York City's leading independent schools. Stretch your wings in a diverse and dynamic learning community that seeks to transform the mind, body, and character of each of its gifted students. Poly Prep also fosters teamwork and the professional development of each staff member.

What is Poly Prep Country Day School?

Founded in 1854, Poly Prep's mission is to prepare and inspire the next diverse generation of leaders and global citizens to act with intelligence, imagination and—above all—character. We enroll a diverse cohort of about 1,000 students (Nursery through 12^th grade) from every borough except the Bronx and offer an outstanding program of academics, athletics, arts, and community service guided by outstanding faculty.

Poly Prep operates a 25-acre campus in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, for its Upper and Middle Schools, and a Lower School in Park Slope. For more information about Poly Prep, please visit www.polyprep.org. The Marketing & Communications Department works primarily on the Dyker Heights campus.

The Parent Marketing & Communications Associate

The Parent Marketing & Communications Associate will be a new position in the Marketing & Communications Department, creating a unique opportunity for the first employee in this role to help define the position and grow personally and professionally. He/she will collaborate with other staff in the Advancement Office—and will work with Poly parents—to ensure the timely delivery of effective, accurate, and intelligently designed parent communications via the web, social media, direct email, and other platforms.

Reporting to the Director of Marketing & Communications, the Parent Marketing & Communications Associate will be a full-time position and will be part of a four-person team that also includes an Associate Director, a Communications Associate, and a part-time Archivist.

Specifically, the Parent Marketing & Communications Associate will have responsibility for three key areas of parent communications:

1) School Calendar. Maintenance of the school calendar, administration of monthly or semi-monthly school calendar meeting (including relevant faculty and staff) and website and social media broadcast of school calendar data for parent and Poly community information-sharing, event marketing, and branding; implementation of new online event and calendar submission system.

2) Parent Information-Sharing System. Researching, drafting, proofing, and transmission of parent emails and related parent web-pages, including academic and programmatic event announcements; school performing arts and visual arts events announcements; start-of-school webpages and announcements; bus and lunch pages and announcements; emergency alerts, related social media and website postings; creation and maintenance of a new school-wide parent communications production calendar.

3) New Parent Intranet. In collaboration with the Information Technology and Registrar's departments, creation and maintenance of a new gated Poly Parent Intranet, including portal, policy webpages, and web-based family handbook and other official school policies; and other webpages and downloadable or online forms including health and wellness forms; community service forms, athletic participation forms, filed trip permission forms and other related information and material.

The new Parent Marketing & Communications Associate will also assist the Director of Marketing & Communications in creating any necessary ancillary material for the three main project areas outlined above, including information in graphic, photographic, videographic, or audio format. He/she will also perform other duties as assigned.

Required Experience, Skills & Education

The ideal candidate for the new Parent Marketing & Communications Associate position will have 2-3 years new/digital media, communications, and professional writing experience, with an emphasis on website content management, "push page" email production, and an understanding of related user database practice and management. The ideal candidate should also possess a B.A. in either new/digital media, journalism, communications, English, or the equivalent in a related discipline.

She/he will exhibit a creative approach to the marketing and communications needs of parents and families in an independent school, university, or non-profit environment. Candidate must possess superior website content management and architecture, database, and reporting and editing skills. Candidate must possess maturity, tact, and good judgment and must be able to meet very frequent production deadlines. Accuracy in the handling of large amounts of information will also be a key skill.

The Parent Marketing & Communications Associate must be able to work a flexible schedule, including occasional morning and/or evening/weekend events.

Additional Technical Skills

The ideal candidate will possess the following technical skills: web design and HTML, cascading style sheets; website content management systems, databases, photography and photo editing, videography and video editing, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Kintera/Blackbaud, Adobe Suite, and MicroSoft Office (all applications); iMovie and or FinalCutPro or their equivalent.