Across the country, school websites have reinvigorated newsletters and report cards, stitching together an intimate tapestry of pictures, videos, and blogs highlighting a school’s accomplishments, academic programs, or upcoming events, as well as providing students and parents secured-access to grades, attendance rates, and other data, educators and parents say.
In this age of Googling, a captivating website can be a gold mine in wooing private donors, top-notch teachers, or students and families hunting for a school, they say.
“Some schools have these flashy websites that will obviously attract parents to their school, and there are some like ours that have nothing,’’ said Kenny Jervis, a parent at the Roger Clap Elementary School in Dorchester, which is planning a website for this fall. “We’ve been designated an innovation school, but we don’t have the innovation.’’
Lack of money or someone to maintain the sites have been preventing many schools from launching official domains in cyberspace. Tight resources also challenge schools that do have websites, creating uneven quality.
Some schools aggressively post updates and provide password-protected access, while other sites are neglected.
The most recent blog posting at Another Course to College, a nationally recognized high school in Brighton, congratulates the class of 2009 on its graduation.
By contrast, a news ticker runs at the top of the site for Odyssey High School in South Boston. On the site for TechBoston Academy in Dorchester, a video clip from President Obama’s recent visit takes up half its home page.
“It’s a travesty we don’t have a website to feature our students’ work,’’ said Rudolph Weekes, headmaster at Media Communications Technology High.
It was not that way until two years ago. The school had its own site then, but Weekes shut it down because of technological glitches. The website had been heavily promoted, and many students and teachers still wear lanyards featuring the domain’s name.
