News & Information

The Bellingham School District has launched a new Web site to improve access to information for students, families, community members and staff at bellinghamschools.org

The new site features drop-down menus, allowing one-click access to school, departmental and School Board Web pages, and to information, resources and forms most requested by students, parents and staff. The homepage also features an "In the News" section to highlight some of our most frequently accessed information by topic, a current news feed, a feature of school news, rotating photos, and a direct link to our emergency and weather Web page at bsd501.org

A highlight of the new Web site is an online, searchable staff directory with phone and e-mail addresses. This provides public access to contact information and also eliminated the expense of printing a staff directory, a cost-savings measure in our current budget savings plan. E-mail addresses for staff have been changed according to this model: firstname.lastname@bellinghamschools.org The district's domain name has changed to bellinghamschools.org. Both old and new e-mail addresses and domain names will continue to function until users have time to adjust to the change.

The new online districtwide calendaring system launched earlier this fall is also part of the new Web site.

"Students, parents, community members and staff were involved in the multi-year process to develop the new Web site," says Tanya Rowe, director of Communications and Community Relations. "It will evolve over time. The site is run by a content management system, which provides the foundation and structure for features and improvements that we will be exploring for the future. This also provides greater flexibility for adapting our menus based upon on our users' needs."

The new Web site was funded by the voter-approved technology levy, which can only be used for technology purposes. General funds were not used for this project.

Phase two of the project will begin in February and involves upgrading all school Web sites with similar improvements using the same technology as the district site.

To improve users' experiences in locating information, we used input from a focus group of stakeholders to develop the new Web site's menus and navigation. With feedback about the Web site, please contact Webmaster Ken Russell. We may or may not be able to incorporate a specific suggestion, but we will take it into consideration as we constantly improve the Web site.