Awarded 2005 Incline Award and 2005 Lookout Award for Best-in-Show

For more than 40 years, residents of Signal Mountain and Walden, Tenn., had strived to get Hamilton County government to build a high school on Signal Mountain. Residents' high school-aged children were commuting up to an hour and a half each way just to go to school. Even worse, the school they commuted to was 10 percent over capacity.

Efforts to get a school funded and built were hampered by a disorganized support base, political strife and confusion over the needs of the community and the potential benefits of a new school. The "Friends of Signal Mountain High School" group (FSMHS) asked Waterhouse Public Relations to help develop and enact a strategic communications plan to get the word out and build support.

Objectives

Educate audiences and gain support for the building of a joint middle school and high school on Signal Mountain.
Secure needed funding from the community to pay for half of the cost.
Gain a commitment from Hamilton County to pay for the other half and agree to have the school built within three years, providing that the full funding amount be in place.

Strategies

1. Organize a core group of local residents to establish a clear set of goals, engage a pre-launch public awareness campaign, and gain public support for the project.
2. Implement a sustained communications plan, openly exploring many funding options, including sales and property tax increases, to continue to build support for the school project.
3. Petition the Hamilton County Commission with well-researched information to gain support for the schools.

Result Highlights

With an extremely ambitious core group of citizens, the FSMHS, with expert direction from Waterhouse PR, petitioned the citizens of Signal Mountain and Walden with a door-to-door grassroots communication strategy. With branding and logo in place, FSMHS representatives convinced the public that a half-cent sales tax increase countywide could help get the local schools built. They also appealed directly to mountain residents to pass a referendum that would temporarily increase property taxes to provide the citizens' half of the school funding monies.

Once both measures passed, FSMHS presented their case to the Hamilton County Commission, including extensive research that showed the level of commitment from the residents of Signal Mountain to make personal sacrifices in order to see a new middle and high school built. Though county funding was not available, and caused a "no" vote, the unification of the community boosted the project to the "top five priorities" list. Since the campaign, the county has given the Signal Mountain Middle and High School construction the green light.