The Española School District has spent $14,000 in e-rate funding since entering into a professional services agreement with Wolfman Brothers Web and Print Services, in August 2015, for Web design and maintenance services.
The agreement details the scope of the work the Web design firm expects to perform in order to maintain the District’s current Website and to completely redesign the site with a brand new one, scheduled to launch on July 1. The District is expected to spend at least another $30,000 once the new site finally launches.
Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said the District’s current technology staff is too small and spread too thin to manage its current Website. She cited a need for information to be posted on a regular basis and a Website to be managed in real time, as the reasons for redesigning the current site.
Gutierrez said Rio Arriba County Commissioner Barney Trujillo, contracted to work on promotional materials and marketing for the 14-school District, is not involved in the redesign project, nor does he make any decisions about the contractor. She said a number of District officials sit on the Design Committee.
According to the agreement documentation, the redesign phase undertaken by Wolfman Brothers will facilitate the design and perform all the development of the new site. The design (look and feel) and the functionality (content management system) of the Website would be determined by District requirements and specifications.
The District’s one-time cost of redesigning the site is $20,000.
Española School District Technology Coordinator Andrew Trujillo referred questions regarding the site’s redesign to John Romero, head of Wolfman Brothers, whose three-person Web design team previously worked on a number of high profile Websites throughout the region, including the Genova Chavez Community Center in Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Public School District website.
According to the terms of the agreement with the District, part of the work the Wolfman Brothers have been performing since last summer, includes maintaining and updating the District’s current Website at a cost of $2,000 per month.
Romero said this “status quo support” stipulates no changes will be made to the architecture and back-end of the current Website.
Romero said the current site was difficult to update because it is designed using an archaic version of WordPress, so once the new Website and content management system goes online, the old site will be phased out.
The redesign plan also calls for each of the District’s 14 schools to have their own page, as a subdomain of the main Website.
Romero said the focus is on the redesigned site and not on fixing the current Website.
“We’re not investing a lot of time and energy on the current Website,” he said.
This contradicts terms outlined in the scope of the work section detailed in the agreement, which states Romero’s firm is to be paid $2,000 monthly for the first phase of the project for maintenance and enrichment of the current Website; redesigning the current Website over the course of the school year and maintenance of the new Website.
Romero said the District staff did little maintenance on the current site prior to the Wolfman Brothers taking over because they didn’t have a lot of qualified staffers who understood the old system.
“Nobody on staff was maintaining it when we came in,” he said. “What we did is, we developed a process via the District’s email system and they feed us the content.”
According to the documentation made public by the District, in addition to an intuitive content management system, the new Web design will also consist of a brand and identity overhaul using the Española School District logo and colors.
Some of the features and requirements for the site include access to information on basic programs, services and forms, access to school policies, statistical information, email lists, mobile device and social media connections and support and analytics providing statistics for comprehensive analysis.
A mock Website for the District sits on the company’s domain, with an incomplete template full of dead links and “dummy” text.
The District site, as it currently looks on the web, contains some outdated information on the District schools, including information on Mountain View Elementary in Cordova, which the District closed and is now the site for Cariños de los Niños Charter School, program newsletters which have not been updated since late 2015 and other sporadicly updated news and announcements.
Romero said Trujillo’s role in the project is to provide guidance on the look of the redesigned Website.
The second phase of the redesigned project is scheduled to be completed by May 31.