First Day of School: How Not to Launch a Website

The Raccoons, Jr. headed off to their respective new schools this morning. We've had very positive contacts/visits at both SOTA II (yay! a charter school) and Central HS, finding staff to be incredibly helpful and welcoming. I was especially amazed at how attentive staff were to Juniorette's need for accommodation due to some autism spectrum issues (it was a bit of a struggle in the previous district).  But, Juniorina summed it up when she sighed, "I hate starting a new school."  It's not like I've moved my kids around a lot--in fact, they've only had three "new school" experiences each, and the last one they had that involved being a new kid was when they left their wonderful parent cooperative kindergarten to start public school. 

In addition to being the new kids, there's the matter of transportation. We lived one block from their grade school, so always walked.  For junior high and high school, I arranged my schedule so that I could pick them up every day.  That's not feasible here, and we're not eligible for school bus service, so my girls are fixin' to become well acquainted with the city mass transit service.   

Slathered on top of our anxiety torte was a layer of confusion about whether today was a half-day or full day. I thought I knew that it was a full day, but Juniorette thought it was a partial day.  No, problem, I thought. I'll just check the district's swell new $40K website, which was recently released to much fanfare. 

The site, full of eye-grabbing color photos of district students, aims to connect the community more quickly to useful school information and allow staff to enhance lessons with online learning links, said Kathy Tyser, associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

It's a very nice looking site.  Slick as the site looks, and as much as I wanted it to connect me to information I needed--quickly--it's not ready for prime time. Just on the home page alone:

• No address or phone number for the district.
• Five links that go to no-content pages
• A link to a calendar that has no information

When I looked at the sub-sites for each of the schools, the not-ready-for-prime-time trend continued.  Yes, I could have called the school. And somewhere, we've got handbooks and fliers and all sorts of papery things filled with information about school.  But, I bought into the PR that I was being presented with a streamlined portal for information.  And, since it was live, I assumed that it was ready and complete.  Sure, I was disappointed, but not surprised. I know how projects like this can go awry.  But, to a another parent--someone less web-adept than me--who might have tried to use the website this morning, the experience would have been frustrating and unsatisfying.  Definitely not the way to convince parents that a website is an adequate alternative source of information.  I want it to get better, and I'll keep checking. And, I will certainly express my disappointment to the appropriate parties.

It reminds me of the ongoing "OPACs suck" discussion.  I'm not sure if it's a matter of the portal developer not delivering a finished/usable product, or if those on the school end need to take responsibility.  Maybe school personnel are supposed to fill in the blanks.  The upside is that I am using this as an instructive example of how not to disappoint and alienate users as we work on a site redesign at the library.  The moral of the story is: If you're going to give someone an elaborately wrapped gift, make sure there's something in the box.

(The rest of the story: School met all day--info courtesy of my colleague Cyndi who is both complete and efficient.  Juniorina walked home and had a "fun" day. Juniorette's bus ride was stressful, and she's glad to have a three-day weekend to regroup.)