Mehlville School District Unveils New Website

The website has a new look, and parents can now customize their child’s calendar and school information.

District Website Coordinator Jack Brickey said the biggest change in the website was the calendar.

“The old calendar, it never really worked the way that you wanted it to; things just didn’t appear,” he said. Parents can now look at a school’s calendar and forward an event to a friend, create a reminder or sign up for daily email activities.

Parents can set up calendars to see events for multiple schools and all activities for those schools on one page. The calendar can also be synched with Google Calendars or Apple’s iCal.

With the district’s diversity in mind, the website can be translated into 66 different languages, made possible by Google Translate. Bosnian is on the list down the road, but the website currently features Croatian, Serbian, German and French.

Individual schools have their own websites and later in the year, each class and teacher can have a page to post assignments and quizzes. Teachers can also add links to additional educational websites.

“I look forward to this being a really strong tool for two-way communication,” Brickey said. “For the first time, each of the schools has their own identity on the website. Each class will be able to have information that’s going to be able to extend the educational experience and make it easier for parents.”

Brickey said the website will help in the district’s efforts to go green with newsletters available through email.

The parent portal will be the same, but will include more information than just class schedules and grades, he said.

PTOs and other parent groups will also be able to create pages on the site. Brickey said many of the groups, such as band boosters, have had their own websites. They can now have space on the district site, making an all-encompassing place for all district groups.

The new website was approved . Former board member Erin Weber voted in opposition.

"I'm not convinced we need to spend this money. Is it something we can live without?” she said.

The new website will cost $21,600 a year, according to estimates provided in December. The cost is an estimated $6,565 more than the old site after $7,300 in savings from an E-rate refund.

The board voted to approve the website, which was designed by SchoolFusion.

“The administration and board made a good decision in going with it- and got it up and running in a short amount of time,” Brickey said.

Talks of a new website came more than a year ago, when then-Director of Communications Emily McFarland formed a website redesign committee to review the functionality of the old site.

Made up of district administration and staff, the committee said the website needed a robust calendar, easier design and better navigation. They also called for more social networking and better tools for teacher, student and parent communication.

“We’re excited about it,” Brickey said. “I think the individual schools are really looking forward to maximizing it. We’ve trained some folks at each school so that they can now be keeping things up-to-date and using it as a solid communications tool, rather than a passive information system.”