Community Engagement Committee Meeting

4 Monday, June 2, 2025 Community Engagement Committee Meeting Round Lake Area School District - CUSD #116 Board of Education Round Lake High School Library 6:00 PM 800 High School Drive Round Lake, IL 60073 Phone: 847-270-9300 1. MEETING OPENING Subject A. Call Meeting to Order Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 1. MEETING OPENING Type Procedural File Attachments Subject B. Roll Call of Committee Members Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 1. MEETING OPENING Type Procedural File Attachments 2. APPROVE MEETING MINUTES Subject A. Approval of Meeting Minutes Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 2. APPROVE MEETING MINUTES Type Action, Minutes Recommended Action Motion to Approve Community Engagement Committee Meeting Minutes of May 5, 2025. Minutes View Minutes for May 5, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting File Attachments Motion & Voting Motion to Approve Community Engagement Committee Meeting Minutes of May 5, 2025. Motion by Julie Lee, second by Jennifer Klingler. Final Resolution: Motion Carried Yes: Jennifer Klingler, Julie Lee 3. DISCUSSION ITEMS Subject A. Iconosquare Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 3. DISCUSSION ITEMS Type Discussion Abstract The Community Engagement Committee will be asked to share feedback regarding the proposal to enter into a 1-Year agreement with Iconosquare, beginning in 2025-26. Background The District currently utilizes Loomly for its social media management. This tool has not been efficient in gathering accurate analytics or posting consistently. Loomly also does not have in-person support available to help troubleshoot issues. After demos with a few social media management platforms, we found that Iconosquare offered the features we were looking for and more to support our district staff and webmasters in maximizing our social media reach. For analytics, Loomly offers the number of: Posts published, total likes, total reach, organic reach, new likes, unlikes, impressions and video views. Iconosquare offers : Engagement, Community Data (this includes demographics of followers), Reach, Views, Mentions Performance, Group Performance (when grouping several profiles), Follower numbers per day, Follower Evolution, and Follower Growth. Request The current Loomly contract is scheduled to expire on July 16, 2025. The Communications Department is requesting that Round Lake does not renew this contract and instead pursues a contract with Iconosquare starting July 1, 2025, with functionality beginning earlier with a signed quote at no additional cost. Rationale The District has contracted with Loomly on a one-year contract for several years. During that time, there have been issues with connecting accounts, posts continuously failing, and analytics being unavailable and difficult to determine. Iconosquare allows users to share posts and allows not only the scheduling of regular posts, but also stories, reposts, comments, videos/reels and TikToks. Loomly often fails to publish videos and does not allow scheduling of additional features such as comments, stories or reposts. These are things that district staff and webmasters do often and do manually by logging into the individual Facebook/Instagram account, which some do not want to do as they would have to connect their person accounts to have access to the school/district page. Iconosquare also has features such as AI inspiration to generate ideas and captions as well as a group calendar to remind webmasters of important dates and holidays and allows users to tag accounts in posts or invite collaborators. Considerations Administration is requesting the approval of a 1-year agreement. The one-year timeline allows us to ensure that the tool works for our district and our webmasters. This is an increased cost from Loomly's $1,614. This is due to the increased functionality we would receive with Iconosquare, in addition to additional support including a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) whose role is to understand our accounts and needs, help us fix problems, and even offer training. Currently, with Loomly, you cannot speak to anyone for support over email or phone. You can only get help through an AI bot. Iconosquare is a German-based company. We have received written confirmation that as of now, Iconosquare pricing is not impacted by tariffs. Iconosquare does work with school districts in the US, but none around us. Examples are: Granite School District , Charleston County School District , Warwick Public Schools, Emery County School District , Sycamore Community Schools, and the Next Generation School. They also work with US Universities such as NYU, CSU, FU, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Tennessee. Connection to Strategic Plan This request aligns directly with Strategic Plan Goal D.1. Parent, Community, and School Partnerships: Continue current efforts to communicate both internally and externally, with emphasis on 1) streamlining communications, 2) proactively sharing the District’s academic and financial successes, 3) outreach to the many diverse community groups, and 4) transparency Potential Cost Breakdown & Funding Source The cost of the 1-year agreement (2025-26) is: 2025-2026: $3,492 This is the cost for 30 social profiles (Facebook and Instagram are considered separate profiles for each school) and 15 users with a nonprofit discount. The annual cost will be paid out of its respective budget year - Engagement & Community Relations Dept. Recommendation There is no recommendation at this time. Administration intends to gather feedback from the Community Engagement Committee on June 2, 2025 and intends on bringing the agreement back to the Finance Committee and full Board on June 16, 2025. File Attachments 4. INFORMATION ITEMS Subject A. Monthly Informational Snapshot Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 4. INFORMATION ITEMS Type Information File Attachments June 24-25 Communications Snapshot.pdf (183 KB) 5. ADJOURNMENT Subject A. Adjourn meeting Meeting Jun 2, 2025 - Community Engagement Committee Meeting Category 5. ADJOURNMENT Type Procedural The meeting was adjourned at _____p.m. File Attachments