How Hamilton is helping parents with its new school district website

Kids and families will have plenty of activities, information and entertainment at the annual PromiseFest at Lincoln Elementary. This year’s festival will also include free soil testing for lead.

Kids and families will have plenty of activities, information and entertainment at the annual PromiseFest at Lincoln Elementary. This year’s festival will also include free soil testing for lead.

In the last decade the websites of public school systems have become increasingly important as a welcoming portal for those with any questions about a school district.

And earlier this week Butler County’s Hamilton Schools unveiled their renovated district website they say will be more user friendly and contain more information.

It’s the latest major change among many in recent months in the 10,000-student city schools, where officials said the public will see a stronger Hamilton Schools’ presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

“Starting after Labor Day, people will see a new and improved look when visiting the website,” said Tricia Smith, technology director for the district.

“We have designed it with the end-user in mind to make it more functional and easy to use with increased accessibility. The design is clean and uncluttered with a visually appealing balance of images, text, and white space.”

“It will offer more convenient, time-saving features with current calendar information, access to online forms, handbooks, our Quality Profile (self-generated report card on the district), and directory information for our students, families, and community,” said Smith.

Joni Copas, spokeswoman for the city schools, said the district made “improvements to be more transparent and user friendly for parents, students, and staff to navigate through the website to find things more quickly and at their fingertips.”

The city schools also will use the new website to push out school news on social media.

“News and announcements will also be pushed automatically to Twitter and Facebook to broaden the scope of views and communication. When you click on the announcement from that social media platform, it will bring them back to the website to see all of the wonderful things happening in our district,” she said.

The district’s old website had its drawbacks, said school officials.

“This website offers more user-friendly and consistent navigational menus in order to find the information they need as quickly as possible. And each page of the website will highlight a calendar of current and upcoming events, News and Announcements, Find it Fast (Quick Links), and How Do I… sections,” said Smith.

“As parents and the community visit each individual school page, they will find information relative to that building with the easy to use navigational menus,” she said.

The new website is scheduled to launch online on Sept. 4.

About the Author