Using school websites to support
This school website supports community outreach and helps families establish home environments to support their children as students.
A
children as students. Our goal is to make school information
1.
accessible to all parents, not just our “regu- lars” who are often at the school. One of the
36 Leadership
middle school of 1,000 students is a busy place. With dwindling resources and increased ac- countability, a well-designed
school website is vital. Students and parents visit high quality websites through a variety of devices and expect equally high quality school-to-home communication. With the support of a professional web design com- pany, our new school website attracts the attention of parents, and supports outreach and engagement both on the school campus and in the community.
Framework for parent involvement Joyce Epstein studies and builds parent
partnership programs. Over the course of her research, she developed a framework of six types of parent involvement (Epstein, 2001). Our school website is designed to sup- port each of these types of involvement.
Parenting: Help all families estab- lish home environments to support
challenges identified by Epstein is to pro- vide information to all families who want it. A recent survey showed that 87 percent of our families have Internet access via a home computer or smartphone. The staff demonstrates the school website to students and parents during the first month of school. Teachers and administrators conduct ongo- ing training throughout the school year. A slide show of student pictures cycles
through the banner regularly. Our staff works to make sure that all groups of stu- dents are represented on the banner slide- show and changes the photos weekly. Stu- dents share the website with parents to show off their photos. The link to our student information sys-
tem is prominently displayed on the home page. The website designer enabled cook- ies, so that once a parent signs in with their student information system username and password, the website will remember the login information for them each time they return to the site. In the counseling section of the website,
information about contacts for parent sup- port and links to the websites of local sup- port agencies are provided.
home-to-school communication about school programs and student progress. Epstein advocates for many ways of com-
2.
municating with parents. We mail letters home and regularly send automated phone calls. The school website is an additional mode to communicate with parents and families. Some parents subscribe to dynamic calendar updates using iCal or RSS feeds; others simply check the website calendar on a regular basis. We attach documents to calendar events
using the file hosting service. For example, chaperones attach all field trip permission slips to the calendar item so parents can access them regardless of the state of their child’s backpack. In contrast to a printed calendar that is obsolete by the time it ar- rives home, the dynamic calendar of the school website is always accurate, even with unexpected changes in schedules. Our website supports parents who may not easily access curricular materials be-
By Tracy Piper
Communicating: Design effective forms of school-to-home and
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40