Finalsite works with districts of all sizes, from small, rural district with small budgets, to districts with 100+ schools. Our design packages and processes scale to fit your district's unique needs.
Rowan-Salisbury School System is a district in North Carolina with more than 30 schools. The district was recently awarded gold in the Digital Media Engagement Category of the Annual NCSPRA Awards. The district's best-in-class design extends beyond the district website to each of the individual district pages, creating an engaging and seamless experience.
Lake Washington School District, comprised of more than 50 schools, is located in Redmond, Washington. The city of Redmond is also home to Microsoft, and growing at a rapid pace. With the many job seekers and new hires visiting the area, the redesigned website had to showcase and provide information about the district and the communities in which the schools are located.
“We are building a school system that reflects the hopes and dreams of our students, parents and community. To do this, we must connect with our stakeholders and include their voice in every decision that we make. Utilizing digital tools like an effective website is paramount in this process. Finalsite understands this and from the beginning of our development process, they were there with us every step of the way. Since our site has launched, we have almost tripled our web traffic and our stakeholders are more engaged than ever.”
John Farrelly, Superintendent
Dare County Schools
“I know whenever I see a Finalsite website, I know its quality. And I know there’s not going to be anyone who can match what you do. There's no one else, I don't even need to talk to them. Your competitors don’t have anything on y’all. You have the most innovative, best modules and software for everything we need. There’s no comparison.”
Valerie Hull, Communications Manager
Barbers Hill ISD
"A highly weighted component in our decision analysis to move to Finalsite was the understanding that you are a digital communication organization and thought leader, not simply a website provider. We are really looking forward to the opportunity to enhance our game."
Jennifer Flierl, Executive Director of Communications
Mequon-Thiensville School District
"We wanted a platform that could easily be used by end users, but wouldn't turn into a disastrous mess — and was very stylized. Finalsite was the only provider that met those two requirements, and since then, has exceeded those expectations."
Doug Orr, Director of Technology
Summit Public Schools
"Finalsite is the industry standard, so we won’t have to worry about them disappearing in the near future and we can be assured that they will stick to industry standards. Their website is both visually appealing and functional, and their administrative panels are very well built and thus easy to navigate for users. Their service includes full support to every USER (both Phone and Email Support provided) unlimited throughout the year, unlimited bandwidth and storage for our website assets, and core updates for compatibility issues and future web improvements. In terms of ADA Compliance, their staff is well trained and they have partnered with (thus far from my research) the best Compliance service on the market currently to target the ADA compliance issues in real-time."
Marco Taddei, Webmaster
Fairfield Public Schools
Want to see more? Visit Our Full Portfolio
Davis School District is a large school district in Farmington, Utah that serves more than 72,000 students across 92 schools. In an effort to improve school-to-home communications for its large community, Davis School District worked with Finalsite to build a website that engages and informs prospective and current families.
The district's new custom design is jam-packed with features that improve the user experience, including an intuitive mega navigation, an organized "Select a School" drowndown menu, quicklinks, easy access to news, calendars, infographics, embedded video, and more.
And, even with the district's size, each of the 92 schools in their district have their own website that mirror's the district's main design, complete with their own colors, branding, and content.
Rochester Public Schools in Rochester, Minnesota knew that when they redesigned their website, they weren't just looking for a website vendor, but a true partner — which explains why they chose Finalsite as their new website provider. The district's website team was savvy, and worked closely with their Finalsite deployment team to launch a custom district website (and 27 individual custom school websites) on an aggressive timeline. And the result is spectacular!
WEBSITE HIGHLIGHTS: -
Mankato Area Public Schools (MAPS) in Mankato is home to a growing, diverse population of 8,500 students and 2,400 employees. Ranked as the #1 school district in Minnesota by Niche.com, Mankato Area Public Schools came to Finalsite looking to build a website that would be a reflection of their excellence.
Their new custom website is fully accessible thanks to the implementation of AudioEye's auto-remediation technology and toolbar, and features numerous assets to improve marketing and communications, including:
Community High School District 155 includes four comprehensive high schools and one alternate education campus, with more than 6,000 students enrolled. Community High School District 155 in Crystal Lake, IL recently won "Best School Website" during the 2019 IAC Awards — judged by leaders at companies like Google, Mastercard, and Hewlitt Packard.
Their new custom website is fully accessible thanks to the implementation of AudioEye's auto-remediation technology and toolbar, and features numerous assets to share the district's story and improve school-to-home communications, including:
Rowan-Salisbury School System is a large school district in Salisbury, North Carolina educating nearly 20,000 students across 35 schools. With an Apple device 1:1 program and an academic program that fosters growth and success, Rowan-Salisbury is a district on the cutting edge — and they needed a website to prove that in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Rowan-Salisbury School System took home an award for their district’s website in 2018. The district’s website was awarded Gold in the NCSPRA (the North Carolina Chapter for NSPRA) annual awards in the Digital Engagement Category. According to Mark Steelman, the district’s webmaster at the time of the website redesign, the new, award-winning website came from a need to control their brand and message.
“Public schools are facing more funding issues and more competition, which means our website is more important than ever. We felt we needed to take more control of our own image. We are an amazing district, and we wanted to do a better job of communicating that,” he said.
Keeping that in mind, the district put an emphasis on marketing the accomplishments of the district. Their new website features an infographic, news highlights, and section focused on alumni accomplishments — all intended to reinforce the positive aspects of the district.
Tulsa Public Schools is a large school district serving thousands of constituents across more than 80 schools! Tulsa Public Schools recently was awarded gold in the 2018 MarComm Awards. The district’s Best-in-Class, custom design is one of the most innovative and stunning district designs we’ve worked on (or seen, for that matter)!
The district’s homepage design features brilliant full-screen photography, a bright color border that changes as you scroll, recent news, featured videos, testimonials, district values, and an infographic highlighting the district’s achievements. This district’s homepage is meant to highlight the accomplishments of the district, in order to attract and recruit families moving to the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. But, all of this marketing doesn’t detract from keeping the district’s current community informed — which is equally as important. Tulsa’s website features simplified navigation, offering quick access to each of the 80+ schools in the districts, careers, parent information, enrollment, news, and calendars. The website also features an advanced search menu, making it easy for website visitors to partake in the user experience they’re most used to: searching! Toggle “Find it Fast” in the top left to unveil a search bar, and quick links to top hit pages based on audience.
And for those of you thinking an accessible website has to be boring — think again. Tulsa’s website design and structure meets WCAG 2.0 standards, and went through a thorough QA check prior to launch. In addition, the district uses AudioEye’s Ally Toolbar and managed service. The toolbar allows website visitors to customize their website experience based on their own need — such as changing color contrast or enabling a screen reader — while the managed service keeps Tulsa’s website content accessible at all times, automatically. Definitely peace of mind with 80+ individual schools and webmasters!
Wilton Public Schools was ranked #2 in the state of CT by Newsweek, and #5 in the state by Niche. A top-performing district brings in families who expect top-notch communications, which is why this small Connecticut-based district chose to work with Finalsite. “We moved to Finalsite and the user-friendly website has made it easy to keep our website current over time. Our school webmasters like the many options for design templates such as the layouts, accordions and other user interfaces that allow us to keep our pages clean, user-friendly and appealing," said Fran Kompar, the districts Director of Digital learning. Learn more about Wilton's redesign story here.
Spring Lake Park Schools in Spring Lake, MN educates more than 6,000 students across 7 schools. Spring Lake Park Schools' brand is all about its community and their site does a great job communicating this. They opted to have a site which visually focuses on individuals, using its people to draw in the viewer. With vivid photography, community testimonials, embedded social media and more, this district's new site reaches its goal of marketing to its prospective community, while still informing its current community.
When Wayzata Public Schools entered the website redesign process, they were looking for a provider who could create a design that accurately reflected their brand. Their previous website “felt patched together,” and didn’t align with who they were as a district. By working with Finalsite, they created a custom web experience that informs and engages their prospective and current communities. Nearly 50% of Wayzata Public School’s website traffic was coming from mobile, which means they wanted to use this redesign strategically. “We wanted to reimagine our website and be forward thinking in how we wanted our stakeholders to engage with our website, email and social media for the next few years,” said Andrew.
“In four redesigns in two districts, I’ve never experienced such a smooth process. Finalsite laid out a timeline, envisioned our goal almost immediately, and gave us the tools that helped us be strategic in what and how content was placed on pages.”
Andrew Hagan, Communications Specialist
Dare County Schools is ranked as one of the best districts in the state of North Carolina. Educating more than 5,000 students across 11 schools nestled on the shores of the Outer Banks, this well-accoladed district partnered with Finalsite to create a website that reflects their story of innovation, community, connectedness, and aspirations. Dare County School’s website project began with an “envisioning tour” — a process led by the district’s superintendent to understand the hopes, dreams, and desires of the entire community for their children, future — and even their website. After meeting with 1,500 people, Dare County Schools re-branded and then partnered with Finalsite to execute a website that reflected the quality and innovation the district is known for. When Dare County Schools was in its decision stage of selecting a website vendor, two important factors came into play quickly: expertise and customer service. “Finalsite’s websites look the best — but more importantly, during the process we were treated with quality customer service. It was personal, and made us feel like we were part of a family.”
Shawnee Mission School District is the third-largest district in Kansas, serving more than 27,000 students and 4,300 employees. With a vast and diverse community spread across 14 cities, improving school- to-home communications and brand was a top priority. According to the district, the biggest improvement has been that Finalsite’s Content Management System is so easy to use, and the design is so much more current and impressive than before. “It communicates the level of excellence the Shawnee Mission School District maintains,” said Shawna Samuel, Director of Communications. With big goals in mind, SMSD worked closely with Finalsite to launch a custom district website, and another 44 individual school websites in six months. With an improved design and user experience, the new site is a true representation of the district’s brand.
“Finalsite collaborated with us to solve some challenging problems we had. They were great to work with, and we could not have done this without them.”
Shawna Samuel, Director of Communications
Ogden School District is a district of about 20 schools, enrolling more than 12,000 students in Ogden Utah. With a rather large community, Ogden’s biggest challenge was informing the public. They needed their web presence to be simple, organized, and consistent throughout their school district, allowing visitors to quickly find and access the information they needed.
They now have an elegant design applied to all their school sites which enables them to tell their story. Both the main district site and each individual school website features a sleek, branded design, and the content is easy to update.
Turner Unified School District 202 is located in Kansas City, Kansas, in Wyandotte county. Other school districts that share a border with Turner are the Bonner Springs School District, Kansas City Kansas School District, and Shawnee Mission School District.
Turner hosts approximately 4000 students from pre-school through twelfth grade. There are four elementary schools containing students from pre-school through fifth grade which are Junction Elementary, Midland Trail Elementary, Oak Grove Elementary, and Turner Elementary. All sixth-grade students matriculate to the Turner Sixth Grade Academy which is designed to help sixth-grade students prepare for their transition to middle school. Upon completion of sixth grade, students transition to Turner Middle School for seventh and eighth grade and then to Turner High School for ninth through twelfth grade. An alternative high school program resides at Journey School of Choice, which is located separately from Turner High School. Turner also hosts QUEST, a dropout recovery program, in collaboration with the Southeast Kansas Educational Service Center. This program provides continued learning opportunities for adult high school dropouts culminating in a Turner High School diploma.
Upper Perkiomen School District wanted a site that was visually appealing, user friendly, and showcase all of the great happenings in their school district — including the construction of a new Middle School. The district uses their homepage to promote the district's initiatives and mission, as well as their upcoming events. To keep their current community informed, the district actively uses their password-protected community portals, news, and directories.
Springfield School District is a small school district in Sprinfield, PA that consists of four schools and a literacy center. Because the district is committed to providing an innovative, customized learning experience for each student, they wanted their website to offer this type of experience to webstite visitors. From the embedded, high-quality hero video that showcases the engagement between student and faculty, to a custom expandable element that highlights their custom approach to learning, SSD's web design, content and experience mirror its mission and brand. Each individual school's site follows the same design as the district homepage, which includes the same unique enhancements, unifying the user experience for website visitors.
Barbers Hill looked to Finalsite to create a new website design that was accessible and met ADA compliance requirements; provided their staff, parents, and community with timely and useful information that would be easy to find; and shared their core objective of "Tradition of Excellence" as both a district and with their schools schools through great design and content. Finalsite worked closely with Barbers Hill to ensure that their site visitors would have a positive experience through easy-to-use navigation, intuitive layouts and well-developed content.
Spring-Ford Area School district is centrally located in a growing area of rural Pennsylvania consisting of 11 schools and a virtual academy. With the mission to be educationally relevant, Spring-Ford partnered with Finalsite to ensure their website proved this mission. Complete with a sticky navigation element on the right, bold call to actions, and a unique customizable news element, the website's improves the user experience by making it easy to access important, personalized content. With parallax scrolling, beautiful high-res images, and an elegant use of the district's bold colors, their new website is engaging, easy-to-use and timeless.
Often, districts use their websites as a simple way to inform their community. However, Minnetonka Public Schools was one of the first districts we worked with who took a marketing-first approach to their website, with the goal of selling the Minnetonka brand, community value, and academic excellence. With 10 schools, as well as numerous community programs for youth and adults, Minnetonka Public Schools boasts a modest-sized district in Minnetonka, Minnesota. When you visit their site, you're greeted with high quality images, an infographic, and an engaging social media mash-up that pulls in the latest content shared by the district. The utility navigation provides quick and easy access to important community links, such as the portal login — ensuring that current families are still given the necessary attention on the new site.
Lake Washington School District, comprised of more than 50 schools, is located in Redmond Washington. The city of Redmond is also home to Microsoft, and growing at a rapid pace. With the many job seekers and new hires visiting the area, the redesigned website had to showcase and provide information about the district and the communities in which the schools are located. An equally important objective was to provide information to current constituent groups in a way that was logical and easily accessible.
The end product features a visually rich homepage that walks new site visitors thought the school district's mission. The site features numerous design enhancements to make the site easy to navigate and prove to its tech-savvy community that it too, is tech-savvy. At the very top of the page, role-based navigation, calendar, news and search features provide current constituents with a variety of access points into the site. A jump to school feature in the footer provides easy access to individual school websites.
Lower Merion School District has been a Finalsite Client since 2012 and has gone through two website redesigns. LMSD's six elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools have all been recognized for excellence at the regional and national levels, and the district uses their site to boast the community's ongoing accomplishments. The mobile-first, intuitive design provides a functional user experience, and gives LMSD a platform to share their most important content right on the homepage. A personalized "Parents" area, which can easily be found in the utility menu at the top, provides current parents with the information and content most relevant to them, without cluttering the homepage. LMSD's site utilizes one of Finalsite's pre-built designs, offering them the design flexibility and customization they required to showcase each of the school's unique content, while maintaining a streamlined brand and UX.
Jackson County Public Schools is a small district in Syva, NC — a location central to cities like Atlanta, GA and Asheville, NC. With nine schools spanning 2 districts and 4,200 students and teachers, JCPS is a small, but impressive district. And they wanted a website to prove it.
At JCPS, the schools in our district are small enough for each student to be known and recognized as an individual, but large enough to provide a variety of opportunities for involvement and growth. JCPS came to Finalsite because they were losing some students to Charter Schools that were popping up in the area as well as to highlight all the features that they have to offer. The technology at JCPS alone was a driving force to keep students attending the schools as well as wanted to show that in the new website.
The School District of Elmbrook is a top tier public school district located fifteen minutes west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and serves the Cities of Brookfield, New Berlin, and the village of Elm Grove. Elmbrook Schools serves over 7,000 students with a dedicated and highly skilled staff of over 1,100. Elmbrook is consistently ranked as one of the top five school districts in the state of Wisconsin. Thier flagship high schools, Brookfield Central and Brookfield East are consistently ranked in the top 400 high schools in the nation by Newsweek magazine. The goal of the redesign was to promote teaching and learning excellence and the personalizing of learning for all students, while also creating a site that made it easy for current and prospective families to navigate to the information they need in just a couple of clicks.The homepage of the site was designed to celebrate the district's accomplishments for current families as well as faculty and staff.
Ellington Public Schools is a small school district in Ellington, CT, whose core values include big heart/small town, innovation, mindfulness, global connectedness, and growing learners/growing leaders. They wanted a site that helps highlight the great teaching/learning that is happening. We are competing with magnet schools that seem to have more of a draw; we need to highlight student life in Ellington. With that, they wanted social mashups as the key to making the site more vibrant and providing changing content. Using a custom design for the Finalsite Feeds module, they highlight students and faculty daily rather than simply providing information, which drives more traffic to the site.
Ellington's website also received a website received the top website award acknowledgment — Communicator of Distinction — and an honorable mention for their social media presence in the 2016 CABE Awards.
Feeling inspired by our portfolio? Request to meet with one of our website experts to see how you can improve your school's website!
Dive into this 80+ page, popular e-book that focuses on every strategy districts need to consider when launching a new website, from budgeting to web accessibility.
![Rowan-Salisbury School System]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1522934805/finalsite/omungbuhs2rzgdfyddh8/rowan-salisbury-featured.png","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1522934805/finalsite/omungbuhs2rzgdfyddh8/rowan-salisbury-featured.png","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1522934805/finalsite/omungbuhs2rzgdfyddh8/rowan-salisbury-featured.png","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1522934805/finalsite/omungbuhs2rzgdfyddh8/rowan-salisbury-featured.png","width":1007}])
![lwsd homepage in laptop and iphone]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1522935337/finalsite/jegj8a5zwgdr0afuj2rv/lwsd-featred.png","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1522935337/finalsite/jegj8a5zwgdr0afuj2rv/lwsd-featred.png","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_3/v1522935337/finalsite/jegj8a5zwgdr0afuj2rv/lwsd-featred.png","width":800},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1522935337/finalsite/jegj8a5zwgdr0afuj2rv/lwsd-featred.png","width":1007}])
![Dare County Schools Logo]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1536086258/finalsite/simxwyroffrp9l15hsaj/DareCountySchools-Logo.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1536086258/finalsite/simxwyroffrp9l15hsaj/DareCountySchools-Logo.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1536086258/finalsite/simxwyroffrp9l15hsaj/DareCountySchools-Logo.jpg","width":654}]){kind=logo}
![ValerieHull]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1532461609/finalsite/adjj7uupxv9jckajc8ak/ValerieHull.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1532461609/finalsite/adjj7uupxv9jckajc8ak/ValerieHull.jpg","width":450}])
![JenniferFlierl]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1532461374/finalsite/trqvtjk1hp8cnwpldvlg/JenniferFlierl.jpg","width":198}])
![SummitPublicSchools_logo]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1532460192/finalsite/puhjicnx1ffjii5mzray/SummitPublicSchools_logo.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1532460192/finalsite/puhjicnx1ffjii5mzray/SummitPublicSchools_logo.jpg","width":286}]){kind=logo}
![fairfield-public-schools-squarelogo]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1532461977/finalsite/bzaawdwbdaa2cxcok5vh/fairfield-public-schools-squarelogo.png","width":180}])