District launches new FinalSite websites after nine‑month migration; officials cite accessibility and search gains

Kristen and Ashley, district communications staff, described a nine‑month project that migrated the district and individual school sites from Blackboard/SchoolWires to FinalSite templates. The sites went live the previous Tuesday, the presenters said, after manual cleanup and reorganization of site content.

Staff said the migration required reviewing roughly 5,007 pages on the old site, and they moved approximately 4,445 active pages into the new FinalSite platform. They also uploaded about 4,348 resources (photos, PDFs, videos) and manually recreated templates and navigation. Ashley led the hands‑on migration work, including a pilot of the pool site in April 2024 to learn the platform prior to districtwide migration.

Kristen said the new site offers expanded translation options (using Weglot), a robust internal search that limits results to district content, a mobile‑friendly “sticky header” navigation, and more accessible page templates. Staff noted that Google indexing and external links will take four to six weeks to settle, and they have added redirects and a 404 reporting page to capture requests for missing content while they finish cleanup.

Board members asked about local management of school pages. Kristen said school administrative assistants and many office staff have been trained and have access to edit their local pages; district staff reduced the number of editors initially to limit accidental changes while migration issues are resolved. The team will continue to process 404 requests and support schools on navigation and content cleanup.

Ending: The board praised the improved design and accessibility and asked staff to continue working on redirect and search cleanups; no formal action was required.