District 91 rolled out a new website last week, a few months late but worth the wait, according to parents and teachers.
“We’ve gotten great feedback when we first showed [parents] the home page and for each school page,” said Asst. Superintendent Ed Brophy.
The new site – forestparkschool.org – has links to Facebook and Twitter, statistics about the community, average teacher salary, administrative pay lists and amount spent per student. But more importantly, each school has its own interactive page with real student faces in the site borders. “We updated our photography to show our students instead of stock photos,” said Brophy.
The five schools each have their own web pages, with digital “backpacks” (sending papers home online), calendars special events and PTO packets. Each school still has a link to the Illinois school report cards although not as prominently displayed as the previous website.
The site was built by Shorewood-based Anttix Inc. The district spent $5,000 on its initial Web page, with an additional $4,000 for each school page and other site pages. At press time, Brophy was unable to come up with a total but said that Anttix came in “within the budget.”
A webmaster is to be hired to maintain the site. Both the Facebook and Twitter accounts are brand new and will be updated by available staff, Brophy said.
