Student Service/Course Selection Updates

(For Secondary School Curators)

Hi all – We are supporting an initiative from ISD in conjunction with the posting of the course selection period at your school. FCPS leadership has requested that all middle and high school web pages include consistent information for academic advising and course selection.  If you have questions related to the initiative, please email Jen Glaser (@email). 

This information may already be on your Student Services page as a card called Academic Advising. The idea is to rework or strengthen some of the content here. Also, they have requested that each site have an announcement on your homepage with a specific icon.

The required items are listed below in steps. Schools may include additional information that is school specific to their pages. But in general, the goal is to have the page contain the following information:

1.   Student Services Page: Make sure that you have a Student Services page with a dedicated card to the 2025-26 course selection information. On most sites, this was the Academic Advising page. You can simply change the title from “Academic Advising” to “Course Selection.”

2.   Course Selection Page: Include the following information in some form of design on the page:

      a.  Course advising dates or timeline by grade level.

      b.  School’s course catalog(s). If you do not have the exact URL for your catalog, please email me.

      c.   FCPS Graduation Requirements page.

      d.  List of school counselors or a link to your School Counselors/Student Services staff page.

      e.  General Academic Advising Information: This refers to the information page in the course catalog. You can find it by going to your school’s online catalog and clicking on “Information” near the top of the page. Then copy the URL and link it to text or a button on your Course Selection page.

      f.   Information about different academic areas:

• Honors, Advanced Placement, and Dual Enrollment.
• Academics and specialized programs.
• Economics and Personal Finance.
• Online Campus.

3.   Events: Create events on your website for all of the following:

• Curriculum night or open house event information for parents/families.
• Curriculum/elective fair dates for students.
• Academy open house dates.
• Any field trips/visits to middle or high school.
• Deadline to change course choices.

4.  Announcement: Add an announcement on your home page that is titled “Choosing Courses for Next School Year 2025-26.” Please use the icon (image) available at this direct link to Brandfolder as the icon for your announcement. Direct the link on the school announcement to the Course Selection page.

5.  Student Services: Make sure you have a Student Services icon as one of the five below the hero image.

6.  Menu Title, URL, and Redirects: In the edit mode, do these three things in the right side column:

• Make sure the Menu link title field says Course Selection. 
• Change the URL of the Course Selection page in the URL alias field to reflect that title. An example is changing /student-services/academic-advising to /student-services/course-selection.
• Create a redirect in the URL redirect field from /student-services/academic-advising to /student-services/course-selection.

EXAMPLES: Herndon High School can be referred to as an example of how the pages can be designed:

• Homepage: Student Services icon and School Announcement
• Landing Page: Student Services
• Announcement: Choosing Courses for Next School Year 2025-26
• Basic Page: Course Selection

If you have any web-related questions, please email Karen Graf (@email) or Bryan Buser (@email). Thank you!!

10 Reasons We Stand Out / What Makes Us a Special Page Samples, Templates, and Tutorial

We are so excited to share with you three examples of the 10 Reasons We Stand Out / What Makes Us a Special Page. Thank you to Sandburg, Haycock, and Oakton for helping with these awesome examples. This effort has inspired a template that will allow other schools to do this as effortlessly as possible. 

Here is a guide that was sent to your principals about the project, which includes ideas for titles and subtitles.

The Office of Communications has partnered with your principals to develop the content. Once the content is finalized, a Google Doc link will be sent to individual school curators with your specific school details so you can start to develop the page.

Examples

• https://sandburgms.fcps.edu/ten-reasons-we-stand-out (solid numbers)
• https://haycockes.fcps.edu/about/what-makes-us-special (outline numbers)
• https://oaktonhs.fcps.edu/discover-10-amazing-qualities 

Video Tutorial

How to Create the Top 10 Reasons/What Makes Us Special Page (18 minutes).

General Procedures

1. Create a new page, or if you already have a What Makes Us Special Page, you may use, prepare, and edit it.
2. Copy and paste the content from either Sandburg Middle School (solid numbers) or Haycock Elementary (outlined numbers) into a full text box on your page.
3. Edit with your school’s content to replace everything except for the numbers. This is most easily done by doing one paragraph at a time.
4. Make sure the numbers are set to text-wrap/left align. 
5. Link to the page from your homepage (either Headline Highlight or one of your three blue callouts (below your events calendar). The headline highlight and the blue callout boxes are each editable directly from the “Edit” button on your homepage.
6. Provide your URL to @email once you have completed the page.  

Note: When saving your page in "draft" view, the page's background may look pink with white boxes around the images. This is okay. It is standard. The background will be white (with the numbers transparent) when you publish the page.

Please email @email or @email with any web development questions. 

THANK YOU for all of your hard work on this project. We have loved learning about each of your schools. 

We look forward to seeing your proud display of the qualities that make your school a special place for our students, families, and communities!

Some Additional Examples

• https://justicehs.fcps.edu/discover-10-amazing-qualities-justice-hs

• https://springfieldestateses.fcps.edu/10-reasons-springfield-estates-stands-out 

• https://sunrisevalleyes.fcps.edu/sunrise-valley-shines

• https://westpotomachs.fcps.edu/what-it-means-be-wolverine 

10 Reasons We Stand Out / What Makes Us a Special Page Project

Dr. Reid has requested a web page for each school that lists the top ten things that make your campus special. The Office of Communications has started the work of collecting some of the content for each of the schools, and I am working on a design that you can easily cut and paste to develop the web page. On October 7, Beth Visioli sent a message to all of the principals explaining the project, so I wanted to make sure I communicated the goals in case your principal asks you about it. In short, over the next few weeks, OC is working with the principal (or their designee) to develop the top ten content for your school. Once the language is approved, I will work with you to develop the web page. The goal is to have all the pages up by the beginning of November.  If you have any questions, please reach out to me at [email protected].

*Update: 10/18/24 - A couple of templates are in place for Dr. Reid to review. If/when approved, an updated message will be sent to curators, along with the samples and a video tutorial on accomplishing the task.

School Meal Menus - New Vendor | Linqconnect Replaces Nutrislice - Website References

All school curators whose schools serve school meals (like lunch),

• Like most of you, we learned very, very recently (within the last week and a half) that the vendor for the school lunch menus changed from Nutrislice to Linqconnect. 
• However, there is a lot of good news from this. Those teal bars at the top of your websites (the ones that say Schoology, SIS, Google Workspace, etc. have a link that says "School Meals." Note that this is a change from what it had said before: "Lunch Menus" have all been updated for you. Long days, but it was worth the time and effort to have your site point to your link, rather than a general homepage that would then require visitors to select your school menu from a dropdown list.
• We have changed those on all of the sites. That particular bar is locked from editing for a few different reasons. Ironically and entirely coincidentally, the request from that office to change "Lunch Menus" to "School Meals" (which makes a lot of sense, as we serve more than lunch at many of our locations) coincided with the need to change your school-specific Nutrislice menu to the Linqconnect one. I am grateful (lucky?) that these two changes were accomplished simultaneously. All you'll need to do for those teal bars is check that the link goes to your menu and says "School Meals" and not a different phrase like "School Menus" or something different.
• When we went into that menu bar to make the Linqconnect and School Meal reference changes, we also changed MySchoolBucks to point to Online Payment of Student Fees on the FCPS central site instead of directly to the vendor website. This allows parents/students/etc. to learn of online payment of student fees written with the FCPS lingo, we'd like them to read first rather than going straight to a vendor login page.
• Regarding the other potential places on the site, this is an excellent opportunity for you to remove any references to the menus and MySchoolBucks from your website. We did not have that teal bar when we first launched the sites. Because of this, we added the lunch menus in spots that made the most sense. That teal bar has been a saving grace in a way. It's a part of the template. That teal bar is present regardless of where you are on your website. 
• I've included in this quick tutorial https://youtu.be/3RRNzV73jPE on the potential places those references might be and what I recommend doing. My recommendation would be to delete any other references. If the parent/student can rely on that teal bar, there is no need to have those anywhere else on the site. I've included where those references might be and the best steps for removing those references. 
• Some schools may also have a food and nutrition page. Food and Nutrition Services has asked to either remove those pages or pare down the content so that specific steps (that have changed over the years) aren't listed on the individual sites but on the central site. If you search "food" in your public site search, you can tell whether you have this page. If you have this, my suggestion would be to unpublish or delete this page and, instead, have something on a page like your resource page, a link that points to https://www.fcps.edu/family-resources/student-safety-and-wellness/food-and-nutrition-programs. You could do this as a callout one-up with the link above that says, "Learn about food and nutrition programs on the FCPS website" as the link text.

3-Hour Early Release Events Added to Elementary School Sites

Elementary School Curators,

The 3-hour early release dates have been added to the elementary school websites as events.

We added these events as part of two groups so that your school's seven 3-hour early release Mondays will only appear on your site.

https://weyanokees.fcps.edu/events?keywords=three-hour&field_date%5Bmin%5D=&field_date%5Bmax%5D=&items_per_page=10

https://bonniebraees.fcps.edu/events?keywords=three-hour&field_date%5Bmin%5D=&field_date%5Bmax%5D=&items_per_page=10

Each event links to the central site where the node was created. Because each of the created nodes links to the central site, the central site will have all 14 three-hour early release dates, which reflect all of the schools. We had to get slightly creative with how we created these.

https://www.fcps.edu/events?keywords=three-hour&field_start_date=&field_start_date_1=

Only your seven events will appear on your site. When you click on the event, you'll see the 14 across the division for the year, along with a link to the region and pyramid maps and a link to where they can learn all they need to know about 3-Hour Early Release Mondays.

The difference is that the 3-hour early release that applies to your pyramid/school will have all of yours listed first.

For example, elementary schools in the pyramids that begin on September 16 will have their pyramids and dates listed first. The content is flipped for elementary schools in the pyramids that begin on September 23, and your pyramids and dates are listed first.

Bonnie Brae example - https://www.fcps.edu/event/three-hour-early-release-9-16-24

Weyanoke example - https://www.fcps.edu/event/three-hour-early-release-9-23-24

The advantages of pushing them from the central site are that we can be confident each elementary school has them, and the content is what the division wants them to say. Also, if something changes (maybe there are snow days on February 10 and March 10, or we want to add another sentence to the description, or there is an instance where a specific elementary school in their list pyramid actually will be using the other set of dates, etc.), we would only need to tweak (at most) 14 events, and any change will be reflected as it should on your site.

TLDR?

The seven 3-hour elementary school early release Mondays have been successfully added centrally to appear correctly on your elementary school website.

Request to Add Special Education Callout Link to FCPS Central Site Page

A request was made by the Special Services Department to add a link to the special education page on the public website. Most schools will already have a callout on your special education page. If you could quickly check your special education page. If there is a callout somewhere on your page, that points to https://www.fcps.edu/academics/academic-overview/special-education-instruction, that is perfect. There is nothing needed on your end. If your page does not have this, the quickest way to do this is to add a callout one-up.

URL: https://www.fcps.edu/academics/academic-overview/special-education-instruction
Link Text: Learn more about special education instruction on the FCPS website.

A few examples:

• https://brookfieldes.fcps.edu/department/special-education
• https://franklinms.fcps.edu/academics/departments/special-education
• https://southlakeshs.fcps.edu/department/special-education

Packing Your Website for the Migration - Comms Camp Presentation

Thanks to all of you who attended Comms Camp on July 30.

I created a virtual edition of my presentation for those who couldn't attend (or might want to watch certain parts again. I timestamped each of the 10 topics I presented.

• Topics and Topic Goals (also in the recording)

• Virtual Presentation (Recorded on 7/30/24) - Timestamped by topic.

Brandfolder for Promo Icons, Hero Images, Announcement Thumbnails, Etc.

https://brandfolder.com/fairfaxcountypublicschools/web-resources - this is where the images are located.

FCPS Brandfolder Account - these are the steps to create your account the first time. 

Elementary School Early Release Mondays - Events and Announcement

For elementary schools only.

We will be pushing from the central office the Monday early releases as events to the elementary school calendars. We know that pyramids group those dates. You will have the early release Mondays that pertain to your school.

We will also push a central site announcement to all elementary school sites that links to https://www.fcps.edu/family-resources/safety-and-transportation/limited-early-release-mondays.

We will do both of these during the first week of August.

A good place for this to be permanent on your website (that you can send out as a link when needed) would be your bell schedule page. A good example to follow is https://wolftrapes.fcps.edu/about/bell-schedule.

Each school will not need to create the Early Release Mondays as events.

Removal of Attendance Forms 

The Department of Special Services sent out a 6/10/24 Actiongram at the end of last week regarding removing attendance forms from schools as the county pivots to ParentVUE to report full-day absences in 24-25. Mary, Karen, and I learned of the Actiongram request on the same day it was sent out. 6/12 was the first time we had to get some clarification on the specific ask.

For this Actiongram request, I've included a 9-minute tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMqHYtFbDQ) on how to meet the request of removing the form from your sites, the recommended language to include, and the link to point to on the central site (https://www.fcps.edu/attendance) that references the change for next year. By linking out to this page, any verbiage or updates as their project moves forward will eliminate the need for a school to keep up with those wording/updates.

Moving to this new way of reporting attendance will have minimal impact on your school's website. It will actually lighten the load quite a bit in the long run. Of course, there will be questions about why the county is moving to ParentVUE. If your school principal, office staff, etc., have questions about that, please have them email Laura Thieman (Senior Manager I, Student Attendance & Engagement • Special Services) at [email protected]. Laura and her team will be setting up and conducting training with the school office on those things.

Based on where the project is, reporting attendance through ParentVue will only be for full-day absences at the start of the year. As the option will not be available to report late arrivals or early checkouts, there will almost certainly result in an increase in the volume of reporting absences via the telephone.  If your school uses your school's attendance email address as an option for reporting attendance (such as https://forestvillees.fcps.edu/about/attendance-reporting) , continue to promote that. If you don't use your school's email address as an option to report attendance (https://danielsrunes.fcps.edu/about/attendance-reporting), it could be an opportunity for your school to add this as an option, but you certainly do not need to start using the attendance email address to report attendance. That choice is up to the school.

For schools (mostly secondary) with a general attendance page separate from their attendance form page, this is an opportunity to combine those pages into one if you'd like. An example of that is https://columbiaes.fcps.edu/attendance/attendance-reporting (thank you, Shannon!). The other way is to keep the two pages exactly as you have them and just remove/change any reference on your general attendance page that says "attendance form" to "report attendance," "reporting attendance procedures," etc.

Closer to the start of the school year, we will be pushing an announcement to school sites that mentions these changes, points to https://www.fcps.edu/attendance for additional info, and says something like, "view your school's attendance page to view ways of reporting attendance."

If, after watching the tutorial, you have a website technical question or need assistance with this Department of Special Services Actiongram item, feel free to email me.

For non-website questions that your school may have about attendance reporting through ParentVUE, please email Laura Thieman at [email protected].

Recording of Website Chat – May 10, 2024

Recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8qngmIX1BJPb6zMBApHyeSRkTjcdr4K/view?usp=sharing 

Title: Getting Your Website Summer Ready

Agenda: As you prepare to leave the website for summer break, use this nifty checklist to help you make sure you are not forgetting anything and you are ready for fall. 

Checklist: (Preparing Your School Website For The 24-25 School Year) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eokZEK_gYxfER8ch-EzFjOePHFSEU1hv1wp6KlNY0Y0/edit?usp=sharing

School Website Manual 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QUHegINYAdB32UkFyfDjX8MEPhNRWMWWQghMij4MI4Q/edit?usp=sharing

Schoology Group

Join our Schoology group, OCCR - School Web Curator User Group, at https://lms.fcps.edu/group/5107004446.

Training Resources

Website Training for Site Administrators

It is divided into six required sections and optional supplemental video resources covering many more advanced concepts.

• Section 1 - How Your School Website Works and Your Role in Making That Happen (19 minutes)
• Section 2 - Homepage Editing (18 minutes)
• Section 3 - Creating/Managing Events(14 minutes). You may need to turn your volume up for this one.
• Section 4 - Creating/Managing Announcements (32 minutes)
• Section 5 - Creating/Maintaining Basic Pages and Section Pages (45 minutes)
• Section 6 - Other Best Practices, Tidbits, Tricks, and Shortcuts (50 minutes)

Questions?

• Karen Graf, @email
• Bryan Buser, @email
• @email (managed by Karen and Bryan)