A new district website was designed ahead of the 2019-20 school year.

A link to each school website is highlighted on the district’s new home page with photos of the school buildings. The familiar Newtown Public Schools logo is placed at the top left, and overall, the website appears lighter in color than its last iteration.

Director of Technology Carmella Amodeo and Business Office Coordinator Joanne Morris explained aspects of the new website at the Board of Education’s June 18 meeting.

The new website will still be found at newtown.k12.ct.us. Frequent district website visitors will notice the new appearance.

Ms Amodeo explained she and Ms Morris worked over the last year to revamp the website with the district’s website provider.

“We spent a lot of time trying to take all of the information that was in the [old] site... to gather all the information and parse it out in a way we think is going to be a very calming experience for all parents,” Ms Amodeo explained.

They focused on maintaining the same look across all of the individual school websites, according to the presentation. A light blue bar across the top of the district’s main website will now remain consistent for each individual school website.

“We gave each school their own menu down below so they can add additional resources that may be more pertinent or applicable at their building, whether the handbooks are different or maybe the department has a little bit more information,” Ms Amodeo shared. “Each page will have the same feel and look.”

Ms Amodeo also highlighted that the entire website is translatable. She demonstrated using Spanish as an option.

She also shared that a new area of the website was designed to offer information on the district’s efforts to support social/emotional learning (SEL). A district policy page was also created, and, she added, “it is searchable.”

“We’re hoping that in total, the pages will make things simpler for parents to find the things they need to find,” she said. “We’re going to make it so that information that is common and district-oriented is posted one time and not posted individually by each school, and we are going to try to keep our look as clean and consistent as possible.”

Ms Amodeo also said the site is “cellphone friendly.” It will flow better when browsed on a phone than the last website, according to the presentation. Attention was also paid to the PTA websites for the schools.

The new website went live on August 13, ahead of the start of the 2019-20 school year.