Over the past decade Ive witnessed a few PR people staff the communications desk at the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»School Board office. Then, a few months ago, the district eliminated its two-person communication department, along with six other management positions, as part of its cost-saving measures. At the time, superintendent Steve Cardwell said the district was considering amalgamating some of the lost positions and, in some cases, it might need to put something back.
This week, the VSB announced one of the positions is being reinstated Kurt Heinrich was hired as the districts public relations and media specialist effective Aug. 1. The starting salary was posted at up to $72,604 a year.
Heinrich is a communications professional with ties to Vision Vancouver. He volunteered and worked with the political party for about two years, ending in late 2009.
I initially did outreach, so organizing and after the election it was mainly communications, he explained. I didnt do a lot of mediahere and there wed do some releases, but the majority of it was web communications, so Id update the website and I did writing and support for the board.
I asked Heinrich if he thought his links to Vision would create a perception problem.
I dont know. I hope not. Ive done my best to establish myself as a professional communicator. I sit on [the Canadian Public Relations Society] board for Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»as their online communications chair and Ive worked for the last year and a half as an account manager here at Peak [Communicators]. Ive done tons of work for a whole range of clients. Im sure some people will say, Well his Vision connections make him a Vision guy, but I see myself first and foremost as a storyteller for the district. I cant really skew how people will perceive me, but I can just do my best.
Heinrich has a masters in history from the University of Victoria and a diploma in broadcast journalism from BCIT.
Cardwell had this to say about Heinrich in a press release announcing his appointment:
We are excited to have Kurt joining our team. We believe his experience with traditional media, as well as digital media will be a great asset in helping the district share our inspiring stories with our stakeholders and the general public.
Cardwell later told the Courier the VSB had 20 applicants for the job, plus a number beyond that who were deemed by human resources as not qualified based on the posting.
The human resource/senior management team does the hiring for all board office management jobs.
Trustees are informed and the board could have a say in any management hire. In this case, as with other [similar] hires, the board was informed of the hire, Cardwell said in an email. The process was a completely open competition from start to finish. We advertised the position extensively on our websites, on our social media channels and posted it to relevant public relations job boards. We got a lot of interest. The hiring committee ended up interviewing a number of other candidates for the position. At the end of the day, we felt Kurt was the best suited to help us with the range of unique communications challenges the district faces and we believe he will be a great addition to our team
Cardwell noted the main concern was if Heinrich was as comfortable writing up a communications plan and helping the district deal with a crisis as he was shooting b-roll at a school grad ceremony and updating social media channels. For us the only thing that was important was how good a communicator our new specialist would be, he said.
Twitter: @Naoibh
