Arizona School District Looks To Boost Parent Communications with New Web Platform

  • By Tim Sohn
  • 09/22/11

Gilbert Public Schools in Arizona is beefing up its Web-based parent and community communications portal. As part of the effort the district has deployed Schoolwires Centricity2, a Web platform and portal tool designed for K-12 schools and districts to help enhance their community presence.

"Communicating with our parents and community is paramount," said Nicole Richardson, Web site/multimedia communications supervisor for Gilbert Public Schools. "The Schoolwires' solution offers us the flexibility in design and a large number of easy-to-use communication tools to strengthen our communications with our constituents. It will give us more opportunities to provide information in a clean and accessible fashion, enhancing the image of our district."

Features of Centricity2 include:

  • The ability for teachers to create Web pages using interactive tools;
  • A flexible database application to create staff directories, sports schedules, and maps;
  • "Community Engagement Engine," which helps teachers increase parental involvement, and engage the community through improved social learning, individualized communications, and integrated analytics and metrics;
  • An open integration framework, which allows integration with current systems, data, and third-party applications;
  • Single sign-on for students, teachers, and parents, which provides access to information, media, tools and people involved in the school community;
  • Community Engagement Dashboard, which displays metrics to help measure educator, student, and parent engagement; and
  • The functionality for visitors and district-approved content contributors to access the district Web site anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Gilbert Public Schools, which includes five high schools, six junior high schools, 27 elementary schools, three academies, and an alternative education school, has enrolled about 38,000 students for the 2011-2012 school year. Its budget is $297.4 million.

For more information, visit the Gilbert Public Schools and Centricity2 Web sites.

About the Author

Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.

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