If you've ever sat in a budget meeting wondering whether your school can afford a communications hire, here's the honest math — and the options that exist when the answer is "not this year."
The salary is only the starting point
A part-time communications coordinator at a Catholic school or diocese typically costs $35,000–$40,000 a year. Full-time roles run $46,000–$49,000 — before benefits. Add payroll taxes, insurance, retirement contributions, and the standard rule of thumb puts the true cost of a full-time hire 25–40% above base salary. Then add the costs nobody budgets for: recruiting, onboarding, equipment and software, and the principal's time spent managing the role.
What the role actually covers
In larger dioceses, this work is split across three salaried positions — a Director of Communications, a Director of Marketing, and a Director of Technology. A small parish school is asking one hybrid person to do a meaningful slice of all three: website updates, social media across multiple platforms, email newsletters, photography and video at events, brand consistency, and often light tech support on top. Finding one person who does all of it well, at a school salary, is genuinely hard — which is why these positions sit unfilled or turn over quickly.
What happens when schools skip the hire
Usually one of three things: the work lands on a teacher or office manager who's already stretched thin; it's handed to a well-meaning volunteer and quietly fizzles by October; or it simply doesn't happen. That has a real cost too. Research shows parents' school choices are measurably shaped by what they find online, and 41% of school officials in a national survey directly attributed enrollment increases to their social media efforts. A silent Instagram account and an outdated website aren't neutral — for a prospective family, they're information.
The realistic options
Option one: make the hire, if enrollment and budget support it — a good coordinator earns their keep at schools large enough to sustain the salary. Option two: distribute the work internally with a clear content calendar and honest expectations about quality and consistency. Option three: outsource the communications half of the role — content, social, email, event media — to a specialist, keeping backend technology separate. For most small Catholic schools, the third option delivers coordinator-level output for a small fraction of a single salary, with no hiring risk and no one new to manage.
Questions to ask any provider
Whoever you consider — hire, volunteer, or outside partner — ask the same things: Have they worked with Catholic institutions specifically? Can they show live examples? Who owns the accounts and content (it should be the school, always)? What exactly is included, and what's out of scope? And how will they report back so you can see what you're paying for?
MC Media exists precisely for schools weighing this decision — coordinator-level communications work, priced for Catholic school budgets, from someone already embedded in Catholic institutional life in Houston.
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