Newark Public Schools: About 80 School Sites, One Network

The mission

Founded in 1676, Newark Public Schools is among New Jersey's oldest and largest districts: 66 schools, more than 5,000 staff and more than 35,000 students. About 80 school websites sat on Schoolwires, a closed, license based platform that offered no way to export the district's own content. The district wanted to stop paying for a system it did not control. Brian Messenlehner did the original WordPress Multisite build and led the giant migration that moved every school off Schoolwires and onto one network the district owns, cutting its yearly website platform costs by about 75 percent.

The lead story: moving about 80 sites off Schoolwires

This was one of the largest Schoolwires to WordPress moves we know of. Schoolwires gave the district no export of its own content, so we wrote a custom migration script that rebuilt each school site from its live pages. It carried over menus, page hierarchy and original URLs, so bookmarks, search results and links in old emails kept working after launch. Every school landed in a single WordPress Multisite network with its existing content already in place instead of retyping it.

What the move saved

Leaving Schoolwires ended the district's per site platform licensing and replaced it with one open source network on managed hosting. The money that used to go to license fees now goes into new features for families and staff.

By the second year, running the district's sites on WordPress cost about $14,400 a year, compared with about $59,000 a year for Schoolwires.

We now offer the same approach to other districts. See Schoolwires to WordPress migration for how it works.

This case study walks through the live district network section by section: the district homepage, the Choose a School menu, individual school sites that each keep their own colors and branding, the combined district and school calendar, and the filterable district events listing. Along the way we explain how the migration worked and what the district gained from owning its platform.

Key features

• One WordPress Multisite network for the district site and every school site
• Custom migration script that rebuilt about 80 Schoolwires sites with their menus, page hierarchy and original URLs
• Per school branding: each school picks its own colors, logo and homepage layout
• District calendar that pushes events to every school calendar, filterable by category
• Mobile app on iOS and Android with push alerts for events and safety notices
• Responsive design that works on phones, tablets and desktops

The district homepage: every audience in one place

The homepage is the front door for families, staff, students and the wider community. District communications put their most important announcement at the top, and the navigation leads to District Info, Newark Enrolls, the Board of Education, departments and resources for each audience.

Below the announcement, four color coded panels for Students, Families, Employees and Community send each audience straight to the tools they use most: student portal, lunch menus and applications, enrollment, staff logins, careers, news and press releases. Each tile is a plain WordPress link that district staff can change without a developer.

The News Feed and Upcoming Events columns update themselves. Press releases appear as soon as they are published, and the events list is pulled from the same district calendar that feeds every school.

Choose a School: about 80 sites, one network

Every school site lives in one WordPress Multisite network, so the district can list them all in a single Choose a School menu, grouped into Pre-K and Kindergarten, Elementary, High, Specialized and Charter schools. Updates to WordPress, plugins and security run once for the whole network instead of 80 separate times.

School sites with their own colors

Each school runs its own site with its own colors, logo, menus, news and staff pages, while sharing the same theme, tools and hosting. Arts High School goes green and gold, Science Park blue and gold, Barringer blue, and Michelle Obama Elementary maroon. School staff publish their own open houses, news and notices.

Calendars: district events flow to every school

One of the biggest wins is the calendar. District events such as holidays, early dismissals and board meetings are entered once and appear on every school calendar automatically. Each school adds its own events on top, and color coded District Event and School Event labels make it obvious which is which. Families can subscribe to the calendar or move month to month.

The district calendar shows district wide events in a month grid with selectors for any school calendar or sports calendar, plus downloadable school year calendars below it.

District events: filter by category

The events listing has search plus a category filter with groups like Board of Education, Parent Events, School Event and Open Houses. During open house season, a parent can pick Open Houses and see every school open house in the district in one list, with date, time and location.

Clicking an event opens its own page with the date, time, location, Google Calendar and iCal links, and categories, plus any banner or call to action the team adds. The Newark Enrolls All Schools Fair page is a good example: one event that promotes all 66 schools.

The app: alerts in every family's pocket

We built the district mobile app for iOS and Android on top of the same WordPress network. It shares news and events from the website and sends push alerts for events and safety notices, so families hear about a schedule change or safety notice right away instead of finding out on their next website visit.

Hosting and support

AlphaWeb hosts the Newark Public Schools network today, handling updates, security, backups and performance for the district site and every school site. We work alongside the district's own support team, including Cameron Barrett of Newark Public Schools, who helps support and manage the network day to day. Because it is one network, a fix or improvement ships to every school at once.

The results

Newark Public Schools now owns its website platform. About 80 school sites moved off Schoolwires onto one WordPress Multisite network, saving the district about $45,000 a year, with shared tools, per school branding, a calendar that keeps every school in sync with the district, and an app for families.

Project leadership by Brian Messenlehner.

Stack

• WordPress Multisite
• Custom Schoolwires migration script
• Events calendar with category filters
• Mobile app for iOS and Android with push alerts
• Managed hosting

Related reading

• Schoolwires to WordPress migration
• WordPress for schools and districts
• WordPress Multisite development
• More WordPress and mobile app projects