Wachusett unveils new district website with unified menus, better search and calendar RSS
Summary
Communications Director Barry Sklar demonstrated a near-complete district website with unified K'8 templates, high-school-specific pages, syndication of district news to school sites, improved search, Google Calendar/RSS capability, and accessibility/translation features.
The Wachusett Regional School District presented a new district and school website designed to make frequently sought information easier to find, reduce workload for school staff and improve communications with families.
Communications Director Barry Sklar demonstrated the site and described it as roughly "90 to 95%" complete. He showed a unified navigation bar that appears on every site, school-specific banners with logos, and a menu structure that makes static information (calendars, contacts, bus info, lunch menus, student handbooks) easy to find and consistent across K'8 sites. Sklar said the high school will retain a more complex structure appropriate for its needs.
Sklar highlighted a district news and announcements panel. District staff can post articles ("posts") on the district site and tag them to appear automatically on selected school sites or all sites. He said this will make time-sensitive information more visible for families and allow schools to publish timely posts with less technical effort.
The site uses a Google Calendar for events, which can be exported via RSS; Sklar showed attendees where an RSS checkbox appears so users can add the district calendar to personal calendars. He also demonstrated a search function that he said locates migrated pages and current posts more reliably than the previous site.
On accessibility and language support, Sklar said the vendor provides built-in compatibility checks for screen readers and that the site is compatible with Google Translate. The district is exploring an enhanced translation tool offered by the vendor for future rollout.
Committee members asked who would manage school-level content; Sklar said each school will have a designee responsible for its portion of the site. Members recommended adding quick links (for example, an easily accessible lunch menu) and highlighted the need to clean up legacy content migrated from the old site. Sklar said the central office will continue migrating and cleaning content and invited members to submit typos and corrections directly while the site is finalized.
No formal vote was required on the demonstration; members commended Sklar's work and several offered to assist with rollout and training.
