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Mother weaves new Holy Family website
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Neighbors | Submitted.Poland resident Christine Boniface helped Holy Family Roman Catholic School by building the school website. The site took more than eight months to complete.
By SHAIYLA HAKEEM
Noticing the technological advances of other schools, a Poland mom decided to help Holy Family transition into the new era.
Christine Boniface has lived in Poland for the past 15 years. She has three children, Laura, Jimmy and Katherine who all attended Holy Family Roman Catholic School.
Through Boniface’s involvement with the school, she noticed improvements she could make. One of which dealt with the school library’s operating system that was still being organized through the card catalog. This caused problems for students and staff members.
“The card catalog system was becoming obsolete and kids were having trouble finding books because they didn’t match up to the cards anymore,” Boniface said.
In fall 2006, she helped initiate an automated library program which required more than 6,000 books to be electronically transferred into the system. After the library was up and running, Boniface began to think about how the internet could provide instant library access.
This idea led to the creation of the new Holy Family School website, www.hfspoland.org.
“I thought it was time to conquer the website,” she said.
As a busy mother, Boniface found most of her spare time while her children were in bed. She looked over school notes, documents, permission slips and grades. The only problem was that this information was not always available.
“Sometimes documents just don’t make it home or make it home in a timely fashion,” she said.
The current Holy Family school website took more than eight months to complete, but provides quick answers to simple questions. The site features a daily school calendar, lunch menus, athletic schedules, school safety information and educational games. Parents can also keep track with their child’s daily grades from the school site.
“I just thought the school needed another tool to get out timely information,” Boniface said. “Now you can get information without having to actually call the school office.”
Boniface, who has a background in computer systems, built the website free of charge. She said it isn’t just beneficial for parents — students can use it, too.
The school library database can be accessed by students and books can be requested and reserved from the site. It also informs them when a book is overdue.
The school now posts what is called a “green folder” for parents to review. It is located on the website and contains information such as grades, scheduled field trips and upcoming school events. The folder is updated by teachers each Wednesday.
Over the past six years, Boniface has coached volleyball, track and basketball at Holy Family which were all sports her kids participated in. The school houses grades kindergarten through eight and this year is her youngest daughter, Katherine’s, last year as a Holy Family student.
“I’m graduating with my daughter next year,” Boniface said. “I’ve just tried to help wherever I could to make things a little easier for the school.”