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The Brookfield Public School District's new Web site is attractive and extremely easy to navigate. At all times, a visitor has several options for navigating around the site: a left-nav, a "quick links" drop-down menu, and a "bread crumbs" navigation that shows you how you got from "home > where you are." With its mission, as Diane Walsh, the site's manager reports, being "to become the main hub of communication between the school and home," this ease of navigation is extremely important. Since November 2003, when the district overhauled its Web presence, the site has been powered by Finalsite.com, which, in the interest of full disclosure, is partnered with Education World to post these awards. Choices among the sites submitted, however, are made by an independent contractor.

Having a content-management system like Finalsite, which enables non-technical personnel to build, organize, and manage a Web site, makes it possible for schools and districts to delegate the management of sections of a site to more people, including, often, students, PTO/PTA members, etc. This in turn makes it possible for more information to be up to date than is usually the case with a site that requires HTML skills to update.

This strategy has clearly paid off for the Brookfield schools' site, as it's rich with current content and extremely easy to visit.

Congratulations to Brookfield Public Schools! You are a COOL SCHOOL District!