Fairview Park City Schools unveils website redesign

FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio — One of the first endeavors Fairview Park City Schools Communications & Marketing Coordinator Dan Rajkovich decided to tackle after joining the district last summer was a full redesign of the district’s website.

That meticulous effort recently came to fruition with the updated website going live.

“The reaction has been positive,” Rajkovich said. “It’s obviously a difference for anybody coming to our website. I tried to make it more user-friendly but at the same time realize that people don’t really want to try to have re-find their way to get to all of these resources.

“So it’s set up very similar to our old website. I really appreciate everybody’s patience within the district and all of the hard work that everybody put in helping to guide me make a product we’re all proud of.”

Using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding, the district contracted with Blackboard for the new website. The total cost is $20,337, which is a five-year contract that includes an ADA compliance piece.

In order to take the temperature of staff, family and community needs, last year the district hosted a website survey seeking input from internal and external stakeholders about a redesign.

While Rajkovich said the results were expected with parents seeking easy access to calendars, forms and contact information, a deep dive into the website’s usage — based on Google analytics — provided the redesigned framework.

“We really tried to design an experience where parents and community members could get to that information quicker without having to do a lot of navigation,” Rajkovich said. “Another part of it was news and updates.

“We really wanted to make that more front and center on our website and on the individual school pages so parents could stay more connected and get to the information easier without having to dig deep into the website to get it.”

In addition to the survey results, Rajkovich met with key district departments before spending the better part of the winter building the website one page and one section at a time.

“The first thing people notice is it’s more visual,” Rajkovich said. “There are more images of students and video. We really wanted to kind of highlight the Fairview experience for anybody coming to the website.

“We also have a community section, which is a nice resource in terms of connecting parents and stakeholders to different groups in the community. There’s a news section that highlights news from within the district but news from (media) trying to keep the community connected. We also list our current fundraisers for student groups.”

Rajkovich stressed that even though the website redesign is finished that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved going into the future.

“It’s a live document so it’s always kind of changing and evolving,” Rajkovich said. “I’m always looking for input or suggestion if people have ideas.”

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