About Our Website

About Our Website

In response to inquires about how Percy Priest developed and how we maintain our PTO website, here is an overview about "how we do it".

Each year the PTO slate is filled to put key parent volunteers in place with a co-chair that fills the position the following year. We have many generous parent volunteers. Some parents have professional skills in web management and development and others are good writers, photographers and content creators. We have 3 parents who do the primary editing of the site. The site is built in Drupal. Drupal was our platform of choice due to the easy backside content management system. If a parent can do MSWord then they can be taught to add content to the site. And it is an open-source platform, not proprietary so parent Drupal web developers can continue to modify the site. Our strategic plan mandated better use of web tools to communicate with parents. This website is the result of requests in that plan.

We did partner with Horton Group who generously subsidized the cost of the initial development. The PTO chose working with a web development firm rather than parent volunteers in order to add a component of sustainable maintenance that is not volunteer based and for security purposes achieving, what we feel, is a high level site system structure, training options and hosting that will perform for years to come regardless of our volunteer base. Percy Priest also has a long-standing relationship with Horton. They developed our first site. And because of its success we have "upgraded" to the current site. This Drupal template structure and hosting is available through Horton Group for other schools to use.

Now the site is entirely volunteer run, implemented with a system that is tied to our "Friday Folders" that go home with students each Friday. This folder contains more than PTO information. Teachers and MNPS use it to provide homework information, school information and classroom updates. Some students do not have access to the internet so hard copy must still be generated for PTO and school announcements. An opt-out for paper has cut the need for flyers to go home with students who have internet access. An Emma eblast each Friday sends a paperless newsletter and flyer announcements to families that have requested it. That communication is then expanded on the website, allowing easy access to download or view info about fundraising and activities. Collaborative components such as sports team coordination, car pool requests and Wiki content continue to build parent and teacher ownership of the site. This site is now a critical tool for fundraising, membership and parent engagement. And the PTO continues to shape online habits to keep parents coming to the site for information.

MNPS has promised an "official MNPS site" for Percy Priest. We hope to see their site for PPE continue to cooperatively share content. Part of the MNPS features will include teacher pages and teacher blogs. The MNPS site will be maintained differently in accordance with MNPS rules and regulations. This PTO site will continue to be run based on the PTO's web strategy of parent managed content and feed the communication tools we use each day to keep parents engaged at PPE.

Please notify us of any errors or omissions or typos. As a volunteer base we strive to do our best maintaining site content, but are not always perfect.  For more information please contact the current PTO Communications Chair or Horton Group.