Franklin Regional opens school year with new website, stadium upgrades

Franklin Regional school officials made upgrades to their football field as well as their website in the run-up to the new school year.

Online visitors will see a brand-new, revamped website launched in mid-August with a simplified address: FRSDk12.org.

The new site features a revised directory, new teacher pages and a more user-friendly menu.

“We wanted to design a website that met the needs of our branding program for the Franklin Regional School District while making sure that the stakeholders we serve have the features they need and expect,” said Cara Zanella, Director of Development and Communications.

The district will also use the electronic calendar feature of the website, which is compatible with Google calendars. As a result, the district will discontinue the printing of its calendar that was sent home every year at the beginning of school.

Parents and students can also print out a version of the calendar that suits them (see breakout box for details).

Another new feature is an optimized version of the website that displays in an easily-readable format on mobile devices.

“This process was extensive and involved the collaborative efforts of many people and District departments,” Zanella said. “We are pleased with the result, and we hope that our community and families find it easy to use with the content they need.”

For families with the old website address bookmarked in their Web browsers, it will redirect them to the new site.

NEW TURF, TRACK

Students headed to class this week will also see a freshly-turfed field, new track surface and other upgrades at Panther Stadium.

The stadium was closed for most of the summer while work crews removed the old turf and track surfaces, added a shock-absorbing layer to the “D”-shaped areas behind each end zone, and added new fencing around the track.

The turf was last replaced in the summer of 2009.

SLOAN PROJECT

Equipment is also being staged off Sardis Road as work begins on the Sloan “elementary campus” project, which will see the construction of an upper elementary school for grades 3 to 5 and renovation for the existing elementary into a school serving kindergarten through second grade.

FR school board members in June awarded $48.6 million in prime contracts for the project. A citizen group is appealing Murrysville council’s approval of the project. That case is set for a hearing Wednesday in the Westmoreland Court of Common Pleas in Greensburg.