SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Liberty Common School
Choosing a school is one of the most important decisions a family can make, and at Liberty Common, that choice marks the start of a partnership between home and campus.
As a tuition-free, classical charter school, Liberty thrives on parents playing an active role in their child’s education. But making that decision requires a lot more than the latest test scores and descriptions of the curriculum.
It takes a clear, compelling story about who the school is, what it values, and how it supports every student and family—how its uncommon approach to education unites families around a common goal.
“Our previous website was outdated in both design and functionality,” shared Kallie Cooper, Liberty Common’s communications specialist. “While it served its purpose for many years, it no longer met the evolving needs of the school community or reflected the academic excellence Liberty Common is known for nationally.”
Interest in charter schools has been rising nationwide, and Colorado is no exception. Since 2017, enrollment in Colorado charter schools has grown by nearly 13%. The number of charter campuses has also increased, from 250 to 262, while enrollment in district-run schools has declined by 5.6% during the same timeframe.
As Liberty expanded to serve more students across four campuses, especially those that had been previously underserved in the Northern Colorado region, its existing website no longer matched the school’s standards or its story, and there came a call for change.
At a Glance
Liberty Common School in Fort Collins, Colorado, is known across the country for its academic rigor and leadership in classical education and enrollment inclusiveness. With four campuses serving students in grades K–12, the school has long been a model for what high-performing charter schools can achieve.
The Challenge: A Site That Didn’t Serve Its Audience
The school's administrators were wrestling with a rigid, outdated platform, making content updates tedious. Meanwhile, families, especially prospective ones, were frustrated by how hard it was to find basic information.
“The catalyst for change came from both internal and external pressures,” Kallie explained. “We needed a solution that was clean, intuitive, and scalable—something that could grow alongside the school.”
As part of Liberty Common’s long-term vision, every five years, the board of directors creates a strategic plan to guide the school’s priorities and keep its work aligned with its mission. During that process, a new website was identified as a specific objective to support enrollment, communication, and the school’s continued growth.
“An updated, user-friendly website has been a priority for us so more families near and far can learn about us, our philosophy, and the incredible value we bring to students and families every day,” shared former board member, Cindy Skalicky, on behalf of Liberty’s advancement committee.
“We recognized the need to create a website that better represents the school,” Kallie added. “It needed to be beautiful and modern, but also functional, accessible, and future-ready.”
"As a school that produces a high volume of written content ... we needed a platform robust enough to handle and organize that information effectively. Choosing Finalsite was truly the best decision we could have made.”
KALLIE COOPER
COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
The Solution: Finding the Right Partner
“First, we recognized the need to create a website that better represents the school as a model for diverse and equitable family outreach for a classical, charter-school education,” Kallie said.
“Second, the growing demand for a more intuitive, user-friendly experience made it clear a modern, responsive platform was essential,” she continued. “Parents, students, staff, and prospective families needed easier access to key information, from event calendars and enrollment materials to news updates and academic resources. Ultimately, the goal was to create a site that supported the continued growth of the school while aligning with the professionalism and mission of Liberty Common School.”
After evaluating several vendors, Liberty chose Finalsite as its redesign partner. “We selected Finalsite for its beautiful, modern designs and the set of features tailored specifically to the needs of schools,” said Kallie, who admitted that one of the most challenging parts of the redesign process was answering the foundational questions Finalsite posed, like:
- “What feelings should your website convey?”
- “What words describe your ideal website? “
It’s a self-reflective exercise that can give most schools pause, and to answer thoughtfully, she consulted with school founders, administrators, board members, and parents to gather more insights.
Her research efforts paid off. Kallie and her team leaned into the school's story, digging through founding documents, handbooks, and archived articles to build a site that communicated its message through its design.
The support from Finalsite helped the team stay grounded. “A custom design is a lot of extra work, and we won’t pretend it was easy,” Kallie shared. “That said, our Finalsite team was amazing. They reminded us that launching a site is just the beginning, and that refinement continues for 6 to 12 months post-launch. That helped set realistic expectations.”
The Results: An Award-Winning Website
Since launch, the response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive. “I’m particularly proud of how beautiful the site turned out. It truly reflects the spirit and story of our school,” said Kallie. “Every detail, from the design elements to the organization of content, feels intentional and aligned with who we are.”
Flexible and User-Friendly
The site’s ease of use has made a big difference, too. “What I like most about our new site is the navigation,” she said. “It’s intuitive and well-organized, making it easy for users to find what they’re looking for without frustration. The built-in search function is especially powerful; it’s fast, accurate, and pulls relevant content from across the site.”
The school has also embraced several of Finalsite’s tools to simplify content management through Composer, the content management system (CMS). “Finalsite’s tutorials made implementation easy,” said Kallie. “Composer is intuitive—if you can drag and drop, you can build and manage the site. It’s the best part of the platform.”
Simplifying Updates and Serving All Users
And while Composer was essential during the initial build and launch, the team has increasingly relied on Composer’s online publishing module, Posts, as the site has matured.
“We’ve converted all major documents, like the School Policy Manual, handbooks, and operational guides, into Posts,” she shared. “It makes them easier to update, search, and keep accessible across devices.”
That shift has also helped the school comply with Colorado’s accessibility legislation, which mandates that all public entities, including schools, maintain accessible websites. “Posts are structured in a way that supports screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other accessibility tools,” said Kallie. “It’s helped us serve all members of our community.”
Smarter Support for Families
Another standout feature of the site is Finalsite’s Ask AI chatbot, which taps into the power of AI to provide accurate answers to users any time, day or night, and in more than 45 languages.
“It provides instant answers to common questions and helps guide users directly to the right information,” said Kallie. “The dashboard insights have been invaluable, too. We’ve been able to make regular content adjustments, streamline navigation, and keep the site responsive to what our community needs.”
“More importantly, we now have access to data that helps us understand what users are looking for and how to keep improving.”
When it comes to the school’s longstanding academic mission, the platform has proven invaluable in helping the school better reach across minority, low-income, and previously underserved neighborhoods in the community, according to the school’s Headmaster Bob Schaffer. "Our efforts to serve a broad cross-section of the community are aided by both the ease of use for more families across diverse demographics, and the elevated interaction we can measure helps students get the added support they need from parents at home,” he said. “The technology and its elegant design have accelerated closing achievement gaps at rather dramatic rates."
Looking Ahead: Long-Term Value and Confidence in the Platform
Since its launch, the improvements to the site are already clear. “We’ve seen noticeable increases in website traffic and engagement,” Kallie said. A substantial increase, in fact; Liberty saw a 100.2% rise in organic traffic to the site within the first year of its launch.
Adding to that, Liberty’s site earned gold from the NYX Awards, an international competition that recognizes excellence in creative and marketing web design.
For Liberty Common, the decision to redesign the website wasn’t solely about appearances, accessibility mandates, school choice, or even strategic decisions from leadership. The redesign was about aligning its site experience with its mission, working smarter, and meeting rising expectations from families wanting more options for their child’s education.
“As a school that produces a high volume of written content—policies, updates, reports, and more, we needed a platform robust enough to handle and organize that information effectively,” Kallie said. “Choosing Finalsite was truly the best decision we could have made.”
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