CMS4Schools Saves Iola Scandinavia School District Time, Money
When Superintendent Joe Price looked at his district’s old Web site, he didn’t like what he saw.
“It was a mess,” Price said. “It was like a town that was built without any zoning restrictions or a plan. It wasn’t well-constructed or well-organized.”
After taking a course to learn Dreamweaver (another Web site management tool), he saw a CMS4Schools demonstration.
“I was really impressed with the product,” Price said. “When I saw how CMS4Schools worked and what you could do with it, I was amazed. It’s so user-friendly and it doesn’t take any particular skill or training to use.”
The district worked with the CMS4Schools team to develop a custom template and color scheme for the site, which launched in 2007.
The district takes advantage of the CMS4Schools I-Forms tool that allows users to quickly and easily create surveys or forms and add them to a Web page. Completed forms are e-mailed to a selected person and all answers are tracked in a spreadsheet that can be downloaded and analyzed. The Iola Scandinavia School District now uses I-Forms for work orders, parent surveys, course approvals for college credits and even the superintendent’s job evaluation survey.
Another exciting feature: alumni are using the site to organize reunions and update class news. That helps the district stay in touch with former graduates.
Even with this added functionality, CMS4Schools saves the district money.
“We’ve got a much more professional looking Web page than we’ve ever had before and it’s costing us substantially less,” Price said. “I thought it would be worth more money if we had to spend it, but we’re actually spending about half of what we were paying a retired teacher to maintain our site.” | 
