District embarks on web redesign

The City School District of Albany is embarking upon a website redesign effort, and has collected your feedback.Survey and focus group results will be posted later this month.

The scope of our web project goes well beyond a redesign of the pages you’ll find at albanyschools.org. It is intended as a redesign of the district’s entire web presence.

As digital communication tools evolve at a rapid pace, the role of the web has never been more important. A site should serve as the nerve center of the district and school communications network. It should be a strategic hub for all connections to students, parents, staff and the community.

It’s critical that we offer a modern web platform with software that’s powerful and easy to use.

The district grasps the importance of advancing our web presence beyond a static communications tool. By creating a centralized hub of distributed content, our web presence can begin incorporating more seamless communications vehicles, data, social media and broader connectivity to the entire school community.

We need to ensure that our web presence is easy to use and powerful enough to communicate effectively with all audiences. To do so, we need to establish some design mandatories for our web presence.

The overall goals of this website redesign are:

• Making our sites mobile-friendly with a responsive design
• Giving our overall web presence a consistent and purposeful design and feel
• Integrating our various systems to make for a smooth and seamless experience on the front end
• Overhauling our content strategy to make sure it’s as easy as possible for our users to find the information they’re looking for or to accomplish whatever task they set out to do (e.g., register for school, learn about or register for an event, locate a form, connect with a staff member)

We look forward to your input.

The mission of the City School District of Albany is to work in partnership with our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success. The district serves about 9,600 students in 18 elementary, middle and high schools. In addition to neighborhood schools, the district includes several magnet schools and programs, as well as other innovative academic opportunities for students, including four themed academies at Albany High School.