For a little less than what administrators had expected to pay, District 91 has enlisted Anttix, a web design company in Shorewood, to overhaul its website. The redesign is expected to cost the district $8,500, according to the contract agreed to by a unanimous vote of the school board earlier this month.
“They were all pretty close in price,” Superintendent Lou Cavallo said of the three firms solicited to bid on the project. Anttix’s proposal came in slightly lower than the others, and is under the projected price tag of $10,000 district administrators were anticipating.
The website for the K-8 schools in Forest Park was dismantled in August and has been described as a largely “static” portrait of the school system. In addition to school calendars and contact information, officials expect to post reams of new data.
According to a sketch of the final product given to board members, each school will have its own homepage, curriculum strategies will be outlined and links to related community resources will be provided.
Educators were in the midst of approving their current budget when the previous site was taken down, and would have been required to post information on the financial projections had the site remained active. However, Cavallo said because it was clear that so much of the information on the site was outdated, it made more sense to pull the plug rather than add new data in a piecemeal fashion.
Anttix has also designed websites for the Plainfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Will James Studio, funeral homes, mortgage brokers and landscape architects.
The school board is anticipating a demo version of the finished product at its November meeting, after which the site is expected to go live.
