School Department and School Committee Offer One Website

on October 15, 2006

The Newton School Committee will be linked to the new and improved Newton Public School website beginning October 15, 2006. The School Committee’s decision was based on findings from a web use survey conducted during the last school year. Respondents to the survey indicated an interest in a single site with easier navigation and more timely information. The School Department and School Committee websites will merge on October 15, 2006 under the new address www.newton.k12.ma.us.

The School Department will manage information about individual schools, central administration, curriculum & instruction, pupil services, human resources, transportation, food service, emergencies and snow days. The School Committee site will focus on the School Committee including its purpose, membership, subcommittees, meeting information, key topics or action items, budget, policies, and the document archive.

The new site will provide reports and other materials to be discussed on the day of School Committee meetings, post summaries of recent meetings, and introduce relevant information about School Committee matters. The School Committee is committed to maintaining the important archives that were carefully posted and preserved on www.newtonpublicschools.com. Transitioning the document archive to the new site is expected to take several months. Archived documents that are not yet available on the new website can be obtained upon request from the School Committee secretary.

At the present time, there is no plan to post community events anywhere on the www.newton.k12.ma.us site.  Both the School Committee and the School Department will consider posting these events after the initial phase-in of the district site.

The School Committee hopes that our users will find this new, improved website the authoritative source for School Committee information. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge and thank former School Committee member Andris Vizulis for his six years of service as webmaster of www.newtonpublicschools.com. School Committee member Reenie Murphy will be assuming responsibility for keeping the School Committee link on the Newton Public Schools website current.