New district website

The school district's new website launched over the weekend. It's still a work in progress, but I think it's pretty good and a good evolution from the CapturePoint version we started with several years ago. The site was created by SchoolFusion and they have a lot of experience with school sites. There is a lot of powerful functionality available, but we're starting relatively slow.

One of the best features is the calendar -- click on View Calendar under "Upcoming Events" (on the right) and then click on "Choose Calendars to View." You will be able to select multiple calendars, for example RHS and Somerville, and then see them integrated into a single calendar. This way you see the events that apply to you across multiple schools. It's a cool feature. (Did I mention that the calendars are also able to be synced with iCal (and iCal compatible) calendars? So if you use iCal your home calendar will be updated automatically for the calendars to which you subscribe? Yikes! That's high tech!)

Other cool features include much more detailed teacher pages (to come), RSS feed, and translation into several languages such as Korean, Japanese and Spanish, which will be a help to our non-English-speaking families.

So check it out -- click here -- and please give feedback!

Feedback on District Website

If you'd like to answer a couple quick questions about the district website, I'd like to hear it. Feel free to post a comment answering any/all of the following questions:

1) What things do you like and dislike about the current district website?

2) What are the things you like and dislike about your school website?

3) What do you think is missing from the websites?

4) What is the most common reason you visit the district or school website?

5) General website comments?

Thank you.

New Board of Ed web pages

The Board of Ed has expanded its web pages on the District website, in an effort to give the public more information on what we do, how and why. If you go to the Ridgewood Public Schools website and click Board of Ed on the left, you'll find:
-- Board member bios with e-mail addresses;
-- An FAQs page with explanations of how the Board operates, what the Board is responsible for vs. what the superintendent is responsible for, meeting formats, etc.;
-- List of Board committees with descriptions and Board member assignments;
-- Detailed line item budget;
-- Referendum planning page, containing drawings of expansion plans for GW, Willard, Hawes and Ridge.

If you check it out, let me know what you think. Is there anything else about the Board of Ed you'd like to know?

Detailed Budget Online

There is now a complete "line item" budget posted on the District website. You can find it by going to the District website (click here) and clicking on Board of Ed and then click Budget on the left side. There is also something the state calls a "user friendly" budget (that's their term, not ours!), which is a summary version of the same information.

OK, I'll make it even easier: CLICK HERE for a direct link to the budget page.