Thursday, June 5, 2014

Cool Things Are Afoot




I hope you've all taken the time to check out the new school website. 

One of the components of the site that I'm most excited about launching is the CURRENT PARENTS page - it's the last tab on the right, as you can see in the screen grab above.

This page is meant for current Sunflower families only, so is password-protected. Katie will be sending out the password with next month's invoices, and I'll probably put up signs at all the sign-in tables. The reason we're choosing to make this page private is that it's going to be the home to two cool features:

1) PAY TUITION ONLINE - We've set up an online payment system, so parents can pay their tuition with either a PayPal account or a major credit card. Of course, if you want to continue paying by personal check or your own online bill pay, you certainly can. I advocated for this new online alternative because I like the idea of earning airline miles for tuition, and taking a free vacation without the kids at the end of the year. Woot woot! (Yeah, yeah...I'm terrible). I'll post a separate tutorial as soon as my test payment clears and I've confirmed the system is running smoothly. (P.S., Katie, I want my money back.)

2) SCHOOL DIRECTORY - As we get closer to the start of the new school year, you'll be able to click on that big orange button and access a database of student names and contact info for all your birthday party and playdate needs. The last time we printed hard copies of the directory, we ended up using 1200 sheets of paper and it was overwhelming (and overwhelmingly expensive), and no sooner had we passed out the copies than new students joined the school and the directory became out of date. This will be a great, consistently-updated alternative.

Questions? Suggestions? Let's hear 'em!

-Brooke


No comments:

Post a Comment