Harlingen CISD officials presented a redesigned district and campus website and a phased plan to add an AI assistant and gather board and community feedback during a Transforming Teaching and Learning committee meeting.

District leaders said the new site is meant to be “a true front door” for families, staff and community partners and to consolidate messaging systems currently maintained across multiple platforms.

The redesign consolidates ParentSquare and SmartSites into a single ecosystem and adds built‑in accessibility tools such as language translation, adjustable fonts and contrast controls. Juan Rodriguez, the district’s coordinator for marketing and student outreach, said, “This launch isn't just about a new design, it's about building stronger connections between our schools and the communities that we serve.”

Committee members and staff described features the district highlighted in a slideshow: a horizontal cascading top menu, a campus selector (high schools, middle schools, elementaries), a “popular links” area, a toggleable video feature that can replace the traditional slider, and campus pages with “celebrations at a glance” and campus statistics. Jessica Martinez, identified in the meeting as the coordinator for print services, said the team sought “a cleaner look” and “easier ways to find things on the site” and emphasized fewer clicks and clearer navigation for users.

Staff said the migration from the old site to the new site has already been completed and that the district briefly activated a video element on the district site to show the feature in the meeting presentation. Dahlia Garcia told the board that administrators will collect feedback at an upcoming leadership retreat and that the district will distribute a link and QR code to the board so trustees can give the first round of feedback.

The district also plans training and ongoing support: prerecorded help on a support page, an “extravaganza” event, and twice‑weekly hands‑on trainings with SmartSites representatives. Rodriguez said campuses will also receive scheduled training and that site content — for example, campus statistics and videos — will be updated campus‑by‑campus; staff said they expected to have campus pages populated and additional updates by the next week after the presentation.

On artificial intelligence, staff described a phased approach. A district staff member who discussed the AI tool said an initial phase would act like a web crawler that summarizes content found on a campus site; a later “phase 2” would use retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) to support side‑by‑side comparisons across campuses. When a trustee asked about the risk of pulling inaccurate material from social media, the presenter said the district is building a controlled dataset and working with Google so the assistant will “only pull what we feed it,” a step the presenter said will limit hallucinations.

Garcia said the board will be the “first layer” of feedback and that the district will use ThoughtExchange and a QR link to gather community input, including PTA, alumni and advisory committees. She said the district intends the website to be iterative: “It’s never gonna be finished. It’s ever gonna be evolving,” staff said, and they invited trustees to provide feedback that staff will incorporate into ongoing updates.

Staff emphasized the site is intended to do more than display information: it should help families enroll students, find resources and contact the right offices quickly. The district also said it will report back to trustees with feedback collected from the board and the community and continue phased AI development and campus rollouts.