Board hears summer rollout plan for new WCPS website aimed at accessibility and simpler navigation

The Washington County Board of Education received a presentation on the district’s website migration, which the communications team plans to soft-launch in July and promote broadly when schools reopen in August.

"We set out with a clear primary goal for this initiative: making it easier for our families, staff, students, and community to find the information they need and stay connected with their schools," Erin, the district’s chief communications officer, said. She described four priorities guiding the redesign: navigability, accessibility, school-level control of content, and improved timely tools for communication.

The presentation said the new site will implement the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) to improve access for users of assistive technologies, add language-translation features for multilingual families, and follow a "two‑click" rule so commonly sought items (calendars, menus, bus routes, staff directories) are reachable in one or two clicks.

Each school will have a site that mirrors the district design while allowing local customization. The new content-management system will replace a patchwork of Google Sites, Wix and Weebly sites, enabling standardized backend training for staff and a district intranet for employee-only resources.

The communications team plans staff training in the weeks before the soft launch, followed by a stakeholder audit within a year to test whether users can find information within the intended two clicks. Board members praised the planned improvements and several said they had experienced difficulty navigating the previous site.

No formal board action was required; the presentation was informational and staff will return with rollout updates and post-launch evaluation results.