Schools

Seattle Public Schools: New SPS Websites This Summer

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is engaged in a project to improve the user experience of our websites. The redesigned district and school ...

Press Release Desk, News Partner

Posted Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 2:29 pm PT

Press release from Seattle Public Schools:

07/06/2021

Seattle Public Schools Website Redesign

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is engaged in a project to improve the user experience of our websites. The redesigned district and school websites will go live Summer 2021!

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Project Phases

Throughout the phases of the project, there have been and will continue to be opportunities to share your voice and priorities.

We are now in phase 4 of our project.

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Phase 1 November - December: Interviews and focus groups with students and families furthest from educational justice, survey of all SPS website users, and web analytics review.

Phase 2 January – March: Navigation studies to discover logical navigation structure and webpage grouping (information architecture).

Phase 3 March – April: Design and development of look and feel with usability studies to ensure the navigation, categories, and design meet the needs of our families, students, staff, partners and broader community.

Phase 4 April – August: Content migration and new website goes live! New sites will go live in August.

About this Project

The SPS websites are the primary communication tool for staff and families and acts as the digital hub for district and school educational resources and information. Serving over 100 schools and close to 53,000 students, SPS sites need to work for students, current and prospective families, staff, and community members.

The project goals center user experience, and include: increase accessibility and community feedback in the final design, improve navigation and search functionality to help readers find resources, improve access with a mobile-first design, build a user-friendly system for content publishers, and provide a more stable web hosting environment – ensuring reliability of services and that our sites are 'always on.'

This project includes the district and school websites.

It will not change tools such as The Source, Schoology, or Clever the student portal.

Why are we making this change?

Providing consistent and predictable updates has been a challenge with the current website host and content management system (CMS).

The web services team is excited that the new system will provide ease of use for the district's 500 editors who maintain the individual school sites, the SPS staff website, and the public district site.

Putting Students and Families First

SPS website redesign project is directly aligned with two Seattle Excellence priorities — providing consistent and predictable operations and ensuring authentic family and community engagement — unapologetically centered on students of color and communities furthest from educational justice.

To be sure we are designing with our community, stakeholder engagement is imperative. In November and December, our community participated in an all-call web survey that was translated into six languages. Nearly 4,000 total people participated.

The team also conducted a series of focus groups with middle and high school students, African American families, Native families, and families supported by Amharic, Cantonese, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese interpreters, staff, and community-based organizations who support families furthest from educational justice.

Navigation: improve navigation to make information easier to find.
Content and Design: design needs to highlight important resources for
students and families.
Visuals and Icons: use more imagery and video to help readers find
information.
Language Support: Lack of translation or accurate translation of key content
created confusion among users and put them in a position where they feel
unsupported and at a disadvantage.
Don't Change Everything: Some resources such as the "Select a School" and location of the Student Family Portal link work well.