State College, Pennsylvania, Sept. 25, 2009 — Saint Louis Public Schools will implement the Schoolwires Centricity strategic website and community management platform to help strengthen home-school connections and to better communicate the value it provides to students and the district, it was announced today by Schoolwires, one of the nation’s leading providers of strategic website and community management solutions for building stronger school communities, more effective schools and greater student success.
One of the most effective tools that will increase the home-school connection is the capability for teachers to easily create and update teacher web sites, said Patrick Wallace, executive director of communications at Saint Louis Public Schools. The tools for creating websites are very similar to those found in Microsoft Word and email so teachers and others are able to adopt the application with very little training. The solution also provides more sophisticated tools like ‘round-trip’ editing to satisfy power users. In addition to providing static information about homework assignments and contact information, teachers can also make use of interactive tools like RSS feeds and blogs to engage with their students and their parents further.
“The teacher web pages will be a great tool for parents to stay informed about what is taking place in their child’s classroom,” explained Wallace. “We expect that these web pages will create a stronger connection between parents and the school, and result in added involvement from parents. We are very excited about the application.”
The ability for any authorized staff member to easily populate the district website with information, resources and interactive tools will also help the district better communicate its strengths in student achievement and teacher quality, said Wallace. “We are facing increased competition from charter, private and parochial schools so it is very important that our website reflects the positive strengths of the district to potential parents, students and staff, as well as our existing community members.”
The district will also implement Synergy, a digital file-sharing solution from Schoolwires that provides administrators, staff and educators a web-based, centralized and secure solution for creating, editing, and sharing content such as documents, files and presentations. The Synergy application is accessible to users from within the Centricity platform without an additional login.
“We support and applaud Saint Louis Public Schools in their goal of strengthening the home-school connection,” said Edward S. Marflak, founder and CEO of Schoolwires. “The engagement tools available to teachers and others in the district – and their ease of use – will help them greatly in this effort.”
About Centricity
Centricityis the first and only strategic solution for connecting K-12 communities – an all-in-one, user-centric solution that puts all district and school constituents on the same page. Unlike any other solution, Centricity is designed to enable collaboration, work hand-in-hand with digital file sharing, improve communications, enhance operational efficiency, and encourage broad adoption and participation by administrators, teachers, families and students. It is a hosted, on-demand solution designed to offer very high levels of security, performance and reliability.
About St Louis Public Schools
St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) is the largest school district in Missouri. SLPS has 74 schools and three alternative programs serving more than 25,000 students in grades Pre-K through 12. The District employs more than 4,000 staff members, including 2,800 classroom teachers.
About Schoolwires, Inc.
Schoolwires Inc. (www.schoolwires.com) is headquartered in Pennsylvania, USA.
Schoolwires provides strategic online communication, community-management and productivity solutions to the K-12 education market. The company’s core product is CentricityTM, which brings together robust and flexible website management, community management and web 2.0/social network capabilities in a single, user-centric solution. Schoolwires also delivers Schoolwires Synergy™, a digital file sharing solution, Schoolwires Assist™, a service request solution, and Schoolwires Share, an exclusive online client community and support center.
Schoolwires ranked in the Inc5000 as the 605th fastest growing private company in 2009. The company achieved Inc500 status the previous two consecutive years, and has ranked in the top ten fastest growing private education companies in the nation for three consecutive years.
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