Don't blame Punahou or other private schools for taking the time and putting in LOTS of energy and thought into establishing and maintaining a good communications protocol where press releases for these types of news are created, where relationships with news organizations are fostered over many years, and where there is a system in place for writing the piece and providing relevant photographs.  You do not mention which public schools (DOE) you are referring to, but I would ask whether those schools have similarly done the work to craft policies, procedures and protocol for feeding the information to the news organizations.  If the news media is not aware of the event and/or has insufficient data, photos, etc., they will be less likely to take their own time to investigate and draft up a story from scratch.  In short, don't blame private schools for doing what public schools do not.  You should also know that it does not take a lot of money to do this, just the initiative.