NANKIN — Mapleton Local Schools will unveil a new website Wednesday, featuring an updated platform for parents and the public to stay on top of news at the school district.
Craig Wentworth, Mapleton’s director of technology, presented the new website to the board at its regular meeting Monday evening.
The board heard several presentations — which took up the bulk of the meeting.
Presentations came from building administrators, and also touched on the National Junior Honor Society, athletics and services provided.
Wentworth said the contract with the district’s old website came up this year. A district team met and evaluated options to replace it.
The new website was created using Parentsquare. According to its website, Parentsquare unifies “school communications and communication-based services [by putting them] … all in one place.”
So, what’s new?
“We’ve simplified it a lot,” Wentworth said. “There’s not as much content because we found, after evaluating our old website, we were updating some things or maybe not updating some things, and people weren’t going to them anyway.
“So, we decided to just get rid of those things altogether and hopefully make it a little bit easier to navigate.”
The new site has tabs for each school, with videos of each. Wentworth said the videos were created by a Mapleton student.
Parentsquare also allows parents to register for different channels where they’ll receive updates about class parties, bus routes and more. Wentworth said members of the public could sign up for some channels to stay updated on school cancellations.
It allows for Facebook posts to be shared to the website, too.
Wentworth said teachers have already been trained on the technology, and expressed positive feelings about the updates.
Along with the new website, Wentworth said the district will transition to using Final Forms. Final Forms, a platform other districts in Ashland County use, makes external forms — like emergency medical forms — electronic.
Ashland City Schools announced in November that it had fully implemented Final Forms.
Wentworth said Final Forms would roll out for Mapleton in June.
