MPS starts rolling out new school web sites

Thanks to Amy Kant, Milwaukee Public Schools is beginning to get its interwebs in order.

Next week, the district will officially launch the first fruits of her labor to create web sites for all of the nearly 180 MPS schools.

Kant, who started on Vliet Street a couple months ago, got going with 10 schools – Academy of Accelerated Learning, Hawley, Obama, Browning, Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language, Gwen T. Jackson, Lloyd Barbee Montessori, Morgandale, Garland and Westside Academy.

Last year community members, including this one, were invited to take part in the district’s marketing think tank, on a volunteer basis, which met monthly to talk about MPS’ communication with the community, its image and brand, use of social media, the web and more.

The hard-working Molly Quirk then prepared a report on the think tank’s discussions and findings and part of that was the improvement of the district’s vast array of web sites.

In addition to school pages on the district portal, like this one, most schools also had a self-created web site like this one. Most were basic, not especially attractive, and because they seemed rarely updated, they weren’t especially useful, either.

Kant’s job is to help rectify the situation and she’s using WordPress sites and StudioPress software to move forward.

Here is one of the sites from the first batch to be completed. They are being presented to schools tomorrow.