District Website Gets Overhaul

The Wall Township School District last week unveiled a new look and feel to its website with hopes that it spurs more open communication by and with the district.

Superintendent Daniel Simon said the redesign has been in the works for months and last Friday and replaces a site that was about five years old. The site went live on Friday.

“As with everything we’re doing here, we wanted the website to reflect an open, transparent flow of information,’’ Simon said. “With some of the new improvements, we hope that this new site will reflect that.’’

In addition to Twitter feeds from Simon and Technology director Jeff Janover, the new site features blogs from each of the principals and many in the administration.

Janover said that feature will be expanding to teachers in the near future. He said having the site become more of a conduit for teacher and administration to give and receive information to students, parents and the community was one of the chief goals of the redesign.

“Before, anything that happened on the website had to be filtered through the Information Technology department,’’ Janover said. “With the new design, that isn’t the case anymore. Administration and teachers will have the ability to communicate when they want.”

Each of the district’s pages for its individual schools, for instance, is lead by a blog from that school’s principal. During the power outage that occurred for a time on Tuesday, Wall Intermediate School Principal Gary Azzolini was able to immediately put up a blog post on the school’s predicament.

The site also has more accessible navigational elements, so finding important information, such as the district’s calendar, is far easier.

Some of the old site is still online. Janover said it will take some time before the entirety of the old site is incorporated into the new design, but that his office was continually working to meld the two.