The Williamsburg-James City County Schools community has a new way to interact with its school district.
The district’s new website, Wjccschools.org, launched Monday. In the coming weeks, the district will also debut multiple apps to facilitate communication between parents, district employees and students.
The new website is locally hosted. While the district’s previous website used the same web address, it was hosted through Edline, and redirected visitors to a different webpage. In addition to the new district website, each school also has a new webpage.
Betsy Overkamp-Smith, the school division’s director of public relations and engagement, said the old website would become inactive, and would eventually be taken down. However, Edline would be responsible for removing the former website.
According to Overkamp-Smith, the new websites will be more efficient in their functionality, simpler to navigate and include a search function on the main page.
In addition to an upgraded website, the school division is also rolling out multiple apps for parents, staff and students. The applications will serve a variety of uses.
TeacherVUE, the app for school division teachers, will map curricula, link them to Standards of Learning and electronic lessons plans, and handle grading. A similar app, SEVUE will be used for special education.
Administrators will use AdminVUE, which will provide access to student demographic information, such as attendance, health and disciplinary records and parent contact information.
HealthVUE replaces SNAP Health Center, and will allow district medical staff the ability to conduct screenings and fill out medical forms on-the-go via iPads.
Two other apps, ParentVUE and StudentVUE, will allow parents and students, respectively, to link with the teacher app to access missed homework, class assignments and grade information. Parents will also be able to update their contact information through the app, while students will be able to communicate instantly with guidance counselors.
Each WJCC family will receive a password to link the information available through the different apps. Previously, parents received passwords for each individual student, and had to access the students’ information separately.
The app for administrators will be made available first, while the apps for parents and students will debut closer to the beginning of the school year. The apps will be available through iTunes and the Google Play store.
The introduction of the new websites and apps has been a process two years in the making. WJCC employees provided input on the data management systems before the changes were implemented.
The new systems will streamline and consolidate information that had previously been handled by five separate programs. The change has an initial cost of roughly $450,000, and annual renewal fees of about $68,000. The annual costs of the new apps and websites will be about the same – if not cheaper – than the previous systems.
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