At long last, school district Web site to get upgrade

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on October 03, 2008

The school district's Web site is getting a sleek new look, much to the school community's approval.

Overhauling the somewhat vintage-looking site at ARPS.org now has been a frequent topic of discussion by School Committee members.

The gray background of the current site, with pictures of the district's school buildings on that users can click to get to individual school pages "is just sort of depressing, I think," member Andrew Churchill said at the committee's last meeting.

"It should look crisp and professional. It should look like we know what we're doing."

Finding the money or staff-hours to do it has been a challenge, however, said Jerry Champagne, director of the district's Information Technology Department.

There are about 1,500 work stations, 400 phones and more than 150 printers hooked up to the district's network along with a variety of other data management and online learning programs and other services, all maintained by seven people on the Information Technology staff, Champagne explained.

Staff and sometimes a revolving cast of interns have created the original Web pages and posted information on them, but keeping them current has been a struggle. "Everybody is straight out," Champagne said.

Champagne looked for a vendor specializing in school Web sites, but the programs they offered did not fully comply with accessibility laws, he said. Programs should be navigable without a mouse, under law, said Nina Koch, an ARHS math teacher who is credited with making marked improvements to the high school site.

Since vendors also charge up to $8,900 to $18,000 per year, Champagne said he decided to go with free "open source" products, narrowing the possible choices to Joomla and Drupal.

"My biggest surprise was finding that Amherst College is using Drupal as their content management system, as is the Daily Hampshire Gazette," he wrote in a memorandum to the School Committee. "Perhaps most importantly, it addresses the sustainability of the site."

Through Koch, he contacted local Web site developer Richard Hood, who has worked on the high school parents' Web site, also considered a model of the kind of forward-looking site the whole district is aiming for.

The district has drafted a preliminary contract with Hood to design a new site for about $4,500, Champagne said.

Meanwhile, high school parents Kate Troast and Adrienne Levine have been posting information they hope high school parents will find useful from the fine arts performance schedule to the days on which school starts late at the parents center site at arhsparentcenter.org.

"We're trying to get the information there so all parents know when things are going on," Troast said. "Otherwise, it's an organized insider's world."

Coming next: the Parents Center has designed handy refrigerator magnets with useful, but sometimes hard-to-find phone numbers - and the schools Web site addresses - on them.

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.