Final round · Presented to Haley Thomas

Seven campuses.
One connected system.

GREEN asked whether we could go beyond a website — into strategy, communications, and a marketing ecosystem that actually works together. This is our answer, and the plan behind it.

Simple Spark

Josh Tate · Founder & Creative Director
(870) 530-4565 · onesimplespark.com

Where we left off

You asked us a question.

Could this be more than a website — a communications package, a marketing strategy, a fully functional ecosystem across all six locations?

GREEN Charter Schools · first-round response

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is the more useful one — because the reason we can say yes is the same reason we think the ecosystem you're describing has a hole in it that nobody has named yet.

The answer

Yes — and it's the direction we hoped GREEN would go.

Before Simple Spark was a web studio, Josh spent twenty years on the marketing side — as a chief marketing officer, a brand strategist, and a director of marketing & communications. Enrollment campaigns, communications planning, and channel strategy are where he comes from. The website work grew out of building sites that could actually carry those campaigns.

A combined scope plays to our strengths even more than the website alone did.

0
years marketing-side leadership
0
GREEN campuses already built in our pilot
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subcontractors — you work with the people who build it

  • Josh Tate

    Founder & Creative Director · 20+ yrs brand & marketing

    Prior: SVP / Chief Marketing Officer, First Community Bank; Principal Brand Strategist, The Solutions Group; Director of Marketing & Communications, Lyon College. Your single point of contact through launch and support.

  • Jay Callicott

    Senior Drupal Architect · 20+ yrs enterprise Drupal

    Senior Backend / AI Engineer, MMGY Global. Prior: Head of Engineering, Mediacurrent — lead architect for Georgia.gov (55+ agency sites) and Vanderbilt. Owns the platform architecture, stack, hosting and security.

  • Lee Quessenberry

    Senior Drupal Developer · 18+ yrs content-managed web

    Senior Drupal Architect, Quest Software. Deep focus on content-rich, accessible WCAG front-ends on Astro and React. Owns the content model, integration wiring and migration from the current GREEN site.

What we found

A family's information doesn't live anywhere.

Between a family's first visit to a GREEN website and their lottery application in Scribbles, there is nothing holding on to them. No list, no follow-up, no second chance. Every inquiry that isn't ready to apply today is simply gone.

Your websites

Scribbles application

Fell through
0
Captured
0

The connective tissue

One place every inquiry lands — and can be reached again.

Every inquiry, tour request, and application-in-progress captured once, then reachable by newsletter, text, or social retargeting from a single place. This is the piece that makes the rest of the ecosystem work together instead of running in parallel.

01

Capture

Inquiry forms, tour requests, event RSVPs and the "Ask GREEN" concierge all write to one record — no matter which of the eight sites a family started on.

02

Nurture

Automated email and SMS sequences carry a family from curiosity to open house to application, with campus-specific content — not one generic blast.

03

Hand off

When the family is ready, they move into the Scribbles lottery application with the context intact — and your team can finally see which campaigns actually produced enrollments.

And it doesn't need a big-ticket system. There are right-sized, well-supported tools that do this for a charter network of GREEN's size — we'd recommend buying, not building, and we'll bring the build-versus-buy comparison to discovery rather than locking you into a platform decision today.

Your systems today

Three systems. None of them tells a family what to do next.

Scribbles takes the application. PowerSchool only knows a student once they enroll. The websites state the rules once. Between them sits every family still deciding — and every deadline they can miss.

Scribbles

greencharterscc.scriborder.com

Lottery application, seat acceptance, registration forms. It receives forms. It doesn’t chase anyone.

PowerSchool

scpcsd.powerschool.com

Parent Portal and student records — on the district’s instance. It only knows a student after they enroll.

Your eight websites

scgreencharter.org + 7 campuses

Publish the rules, the dates and the FAQs. They say the same thing to everyone, once.

What a family can lose, in your own words

  • Miss March 14 and the seat is “offered to the next student on the waitlist.”
  • Two weeks to accept a seat offer.
  • Three weeks to complete registration.
  • December 15 for the Intent to Return.
  • “Waitlists do not carry over from year to year” — every family reapplies, every year.

What we’d connect

We bridge what you already own.

No new vendor, no new licence, no new line in the budget. Your websites become the layer that makes Scribbles and PowerSchool behave like one process.

  • Your site learns who’s asking

    New family, returning, transferring, 8th grader, sibling enrolled — captured once, on the device. No login, no student record.

  • Scribbles’ deadlines become your reminders

    We mirror your lottery timeline and send ahead of each family’s own acceptance window and the March 14 cutoff.

  • PowerSchool stays exactly where it is

    Enrolled families deep-link straight to the Parent Portal. We never touch the district’s instance.

  • One inbox across eight sites

    Inquiries, tour requests and RSVPs from every campus land in one place instead of eight.

  • The rules, answered personally

    “Accept a seat here and you come off every other GREEN waitlist.”

  • It reapplies with them

    An annual nudge, because waitlists reset — and nothing reminds anyone today.

Built into the website you’re already commissioning. Nothing new to licence, nothing new for staff to learn, and no student data leaves the systems that already hold it.

The whole picture

The website is the hub — not the whole job.

Social, paid media, email, print, and enrollment all feed the site and are fed by it. Run separately they compete; run as one system they compound. That's the partnership we're proposing.

One team, one strategy, one reporting rhythm — across all six locations and eight web properties.

Proof, not promises

We didn't describe the new GREEN site. We built it.

A working pilot on GREEN's real content and real photography — the hub plus all seven campus sites, live today. Everything on these slides is a screenshot of software you can click right now.

greencharter.sparkdemo.cloud →
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campuses built
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live properties
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accessibility violations
The full GREEN Charter Schools pilot homepage, scrolling from the 'Empowering the minds of tomorrow through STEM & Energy' hero down through quick links, the campus map, news and the enrollment call to action.

The application

Every screen here is live.

Filterable campus finder, the tuition-free lottery explained in plain language, per-campus sites off one shared template, and the whole thing built mobile-first.

The Find Your Campus page: a map of South Carolina with seven pins, plus grade and region filter chips and a list of campuses.

Find your campus

An interactive map with grade and region filters — seven campuses, one page.

The Admission page explaining the tuition-free lottery process step by step.

How to apply

The tuition-free lottery, step by step, with the hand-off into Scribbles.

The Greenville Elementary campus site, rendered from the shared campus template.

A campus site

Greenville Elementary — its own identity, on the shared campus template.

The GREEN pilot homepage on a phone, with the hero, Apply Now button and quick links stacked for mobile.

Mobile-first

Where most families actually arrive.

The bridge, built

We built the bridge too.

The Navigator tells a family exactly what to do next — their deadlines, the consequences of missing them, and where to act. Behind it, the sync connects Scribbles to Constant Contact automatically.

The Enrollment Navigator situation picker showing three cards: New family, Current family, and Transferring.

Where are you in enrollment?

New family, returning, transferring, or a sibling — one question, no login, no student records. Answers stay on the device.

The Enrollment Navigator timeline showing dated milestones with amber consequence callouts and Scribbles deep-links.

Their personalized timeline

Real Scribbles deadlines, each with a consequence spelled out — sourced verbatim from GREEN’s own admission rules.

The Drupal admin sync dashboard showing a successful sync: 25 records processed, 5 segments, 10 campaigns scheduled, in the Gin admin theme.

The sync, in Drupal

GREEN staff run the sync from the CMS admin — authenticated, no code. 25 records processed, 5 segments created, 10 reminders scheduled — Scribbles data pushed into Constant Contact automatically.

FERPA-safe. The bridge handles applicant contact info and enrollment status — not student education records. PowerSchool stays the system of record, linked via deep links, never integrated.

The efficiency

Build once. Run eight.

The hub and all seven campus sites run on one platform, one template system, and one set of credentials. A change to the campus template ships to every campus at once — and there's only ever one system for your team to learn.

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web properties
0
platform to train on
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weeks to launch

Non-negotiable

Accessibility is a build gate, not a promise.

Every page template is audited automatically on every deploy. If a WCAG 2.2 AA violation appears, the build fails and the change doesn't ship. The pilot's last audit cleared every route — zero violations across all ten pages audited — and you get the same dashboard after launch, so compliance stays visible instead of becoming a once-a-year scramble.

  • WCAG 2.2 AA enforced on every deploy
  • 301 redirects mapped so search rankings survive the move
  • Daily backups, SSL, MFA, uptime and malware monitoring
  • Code, content, design and credentials transfer to GREEN at launch
The pilot's compliance dashboard, audited 2026-06-30: accessibility 10 of 10 pages passing with zero total violations, SEO 100, performance 90, and a per-page results table showing PASS for every route.

Year one

$0 — inside your existing budget.

Discovery, website, agency retainer, paid media and print — all within GREEN's fixed $130,000 annual marketing budget. Not an addition to it.

one-time

$5,000

Discovery

Four weeks. Strategy, journey mapping, channel and platform review.

one-time

$10,750

Website

Hub + seven campus sites. Six weeks to launch. Fixed fee.

annual

$54,000

Agency retainer

$4,500/mo · 30 hours of strategy, social, creative and reporting.

annual

$42,000

Paid media

$2,000/mo Meta + $1,500/mo Google. Shifts toward enrollment peaks.

annual

$18,250

Print + contingency

$15,000 pooled print allowance across six campuses, plus reserve.

Media and print are budgets, not fees — unspent funds stay yours to reallocate. Work beyond the retainer is quoted in advance at $135 / hour.

The retainer · $4,500 / month

0 hours a month — and here's exactly where they go.

Illustrative, not fixed. Actual hours shift as enrollment, recruitment, event and campus priorities change through the year — the point is that the retainer is applied to whatever matters most that month, not rationed by category.

12 hrs

Social strategy, writing, design & scheduling

Network-wide content planning, copywriting, graphic design, scheduling and publishing.

7 hrs

General graphic design

Print and digital materials for enrollment, events, recruitment and campus-specific needs.

5 hrs

Paid social & Google Ads management

Campaign strategy, audience planning, ad creative, implementation and optimization.

4 hrs

Marketing strategy & consultation

Monthly planning, campaign messaging, coordination and brand-consistency guidance.

2 hrs

Reporting & account coordination

Monthly status meeting, performance report, and the quarterly strategic review.

Media and print are budgets, not fees

$3,500/mo paid media and the $15,000 print pool are managed as annual campaign budgets — weighted toward open enrollment and teacher recruitment, not split evenly across six campuses.

Design time in, production costs out

The retainer covers design and print-ready files. Printing, fabrication, installation, shipping and postage come from the separate production allowance.

Nothing over the retainer without a quote

Work beyond the available hours is estimated and approved in advance at $135 / hour. No surprise invoices.

What happens next

A connected program, live before the next enrollment season.

  1. 1

    Weeks 1–4

    Discovery

    Stakeholder interviews, family journey mapping, channel audit, and the build-vs-buy recommendation for capture.

  2. 2

    Weeks 3–8

    Build

    Hub and campus templates, content migration, 301 redirect map, accessibility gate wired into every deploy.

  3. 3

    Week 6

    Launch

    All eight properties live, staff trained, credentials transferred to GREEN.

  4. 4

    Weeks 6–10

    Connect

    Capture layer live, nurture sequences running, paid social and search campaigns in market.

  5. 5

    Ongoing

    Operate

    Monthly planning, campaign management, reporting — and quarterly strategic review with your board.

Thank you

Empowering the minds
of tomorrow.

You asked whether this could be more than a website. It can — and the piece that turns six campuses and eight sites into one program is already sitting in front of you, waiting to be connected.

Simple Spark

Josh Tate · Founder & Creative Director
(870) 530-4565 · josh@onesimplespark.com · onesimplespark.com

Open the live pilot →
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