The Denver Public Schools home page has been redesigned to highlight information targeted to parents – but it also downplays the school board, which has ticked off Roger Kilgore, co-chair of the District School Improvement Accountability Council (SIAC) and recently announced school board candidate.
SIAC serves to inform the board as it makes policy decisions. The tab for the school board information, including meeting agendas and schedules, used to be very visible in the upper right hand corner of the site. There now are two inconspicuous board links lower on the page.
“It is a strong political statement about how important the district believes the board is as the governing policy body,” Kilgore groused.
But this was not the intent of the redesign, district spokeswoman Kristy Armstrong said.
“We did want to make the DPS homepage easier to navigate and be a better resource for families who are looking for information about schools and the district,” she said. “So the homepage was redesigned … to help parents and other visitors better find what they are looking for.”
She said the new layout was built based on analysis of links most often clicked and feedback from department and district leaders and parents. She said the new layout is designed to group links and resources by audience – Parents and Students, Community and Employees. It also features a slider full of photos and positive district news.
So far, well, at least until now, the feedback has been positive, she said.
The DPS homepage gets 14 million hits and 8 million unique visitors annually.