School’s Web site gains popularity

The president of the school’s PTO checks the Web site several times per week.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

POLAND — The desire of a North Elementary School mother to volunteer at her daughter’s school has snowballed into the school’s evolving Web site.

Lori Gawdyda, whose daughter, Sophia, attends North, wanted to volunteer at the school, but her full-time job limited her availability during the day.

“I came to Mr. Masucci and said, ‘I’d like to do your Web site,’” Gawdyda said.

That was last March, and since then, the site, www.poland.k12.oh.us/North, has evolved into a destination for many parents featuring classroom information, a school calendar, lunch menus, photographs, individual teacher pages and a blog by Principal Michael Masucci.

“It’s like a snowball,” the principal said. “It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and better and better.”

Gawdyda worked with Tom Dowlin, a friend who is a graphic artist, Masucci and teachers at the school to create the site.

“We’ve had a lot of wonderful comments about it from parents,” Masucci said. “It’s great.”

Because the site includes information about school policies and procedures, parents like that they don’t have to dig out and leaf through their child’s school manual to access basic information, he said.

Sarah Orr, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, says she logs onto the site several times per week, checking for school information and getting updates about events.

“It’s been very useful,” Orr said.

Gawdyda collected the information for the Web site and says Dowlin assembled it in a creative way, making it visually appealing. The couple worked with school officials to determine what to include on the site.

Some teachers want to join the blogosphere now too, Masucci said.

His blog includes news about the school day, information parents should look for that’s been sent home with their children and upcoming school events.

“It really was a team effort,” Gawdyda said. “It involved all of us working together.”

The smoothness of so many people working together surprised Dowlin.

“It moved along flawlessly,” he said.

Cheryl Saculla, a second-grade teacher at the school, appreciates the ability the site affords teachers to share goings-on in their individual classrooms.

“It gives us the opportunity to communicate with parents,” she said.

Gawdyda also led an in-service for teachers, instructing them about Web sites and how to post information.

And the children are getting involved, too.

“I send my digital camera with my daughter and they have a class photographer,” Gawdyda said.

Pupils take photos of class activities, and she posts them to the site.

The aspect pupils seem most interested in currently involves the dancing elves bearing the faces of teachers, Masucci said. It includes an “elf yourself” feature that allows the user to place the face of someone from the Web site on the body of an elf.

“Everyone here has a really good sense of humor,” the principal said of school faculty and staff.

Gawdyda has bigger plans for the site. She hopes to add weather information, an interactive section, sounds from school concerts and paperwork sent home with pupils.

“As we get more ideas, we’ll keep adding to it,” Gawdyda said.