Warsaw School Board saw its new website at its meeting Tuesday.
Last year, the district went through a process of finding out what was liked and not liked about the old website. The result was the school district’s website has moved over to a new domain, said Dani Barkey, chief communications and accountability officer.
That new domain is warsawschools.org.
Alyssa Richardson, communications associate for the school district, was one of the employees tasked to rebuild the website and presented it to the board.
Parents want information, an easy way to find that information and a streamlined process to get that information, Barkey said.
The one thing that the school district heard was that someone would point parents to a certain article, but the parent would need help finding it, Richardson said.
“We looked at the old pages and saw what information and pages were visited the most,” Richardson said. “That helped us design our new website.”
She also stated she and co-developer Justin Weaver, web administrator for the district, also took parents into account, making the biggest buttons for what the parents asked for, such as lunch menus on the homepage.
During the rebuild of the district’s website, Richardson said information is being moved over to the new site. However, not everything is being moved over.
“Analytics are helpful” in the process, Richardson said. Analytics is data of what information people are looking for and what pages are most visited. That helps determine if some things don’t need to be brought over to the new site. Also, some information is outdated.
Even though the website just launched, it doesn’t mean the work on the site rebuild is done, as Richardson stated the site is “a living document.”
Currently, the new site does have pages for each school, which links visitors to the old school pages, Richardson said. However, each school site will be rebuilt.
The school board also learned about the new grading scale the high school implemented.
Three grading scales will be implemented starting this year.
A 5.0 scale will be used for AP and dual credit courses; a 4.5 scale will be used for honors, work-based learning and internship courses; and a 4.0 scale will be used for all other classes.
Also, a student’s rank in their class will not be published by the school, said Barkey. However, the information is available for such things as scholarships that need that information.
The reason why the school is no longer publishing school rank is because schools are moving away from rankings because it means different things depending on where you go to school.
As an example, she said if a student is homeschooled, they could legitimately say they were number one in their class. It means something different if you say you’re number one in your class if you’re in a class of 20.
The change is the grading scale is retroactive and the school has already updated students’ information.
“We’ve made several spot checks since to make sure everything is all right,” Barkey said. However, she did suggest if a student thinks something might be wrong, they should visit their guidance counselor.
Parents and students are able to see digital content on the school’s website in regards to the new grading scale.
“It’s been going really well,” she said, stating they have not received any negative feedback so far.
