Barrington school officials are excited about the district's new website.

The website — it is located at www.barringtonschools.org — offers improvements from the previous site, said Barrington Superintendent of Schools Michael Messore. 

"This has been years in discussion," said Mr. Messore. 

The superintendent said the new website is more user-friendly and offers a much better search feature. In addition, the new site will do a better job promoting what's happening in the school district.

"And we're looking at uniformity across the district. This helps build that," said Mr. Messore.

The website also offers live-feeds to Twitter and Facebook and allows building principals to pinpoint distribution lists for notifications. Mr. Messore said district officials can now target smaller groups of people to communicate with; for example, if there is a bus running late, the district can specifically communicate with the parents of the children on that bus.

Also, officials have better flexibility with phone notification alerts. 

"We can even make them specific to grade levels," said Mr. Messore, adding that it is important for parents to download the mobile app on their phones.

A company named Apptegy completed the work. Mr. Messore said they have worked on numerous school district sites, including some in Rhode Island. 

The district has already started training for school principals and their support staff. Mr. Messore said there will be more training in the future.  

According to Mr. Messore, the district paid for the new site by reallocating some of the funds that had been earmarked for communication. 

"We priced some (new sites) that were over $20,000. This is lower than that," said Mr. Messore. He could not offer the specific cost. 

Mr. Messore said the district based much of the new sites offerings on information provided in earlier surveys. 

Download it 

Mr. Messore said the new website provides a connected smart device application. The new app for mobile phones will provide access to sports scores, the daily cafeteria menu, news from administrators, policies and handbooks, student stories, events, and emergency notifications. 

Download for Android: http://bit.ly/2Q5HwOn 

Download for iPhone: https://apple.co/2Q8nC5c