Merced City School District launches new websites aimed at being user-friendly

MERCED, Calif. (KFSN) -- The old website for the Merced City School District has a big banner and trucks letting visitors know it's moved to a new URL and an improved site.

"After nearly a decade with our current website provider, we decided to transition to a new user-friendly interface," MCSD Director of Communications Dominique Zuniga said.

The new home page is found at MercedCSD.org. While on the page, visitors will see familiar faces of students, staff and the community.

"We're extremely diverse and we pride ourselves on that, and I think that's just something that we want to make sure is constantly showcased on our website," Zuniga said.

To help accommodate families from all walks of life, the website is ADA compliant.

Each picture features alternative text for those who are visually impaired, and there's an option to choose the display language.

"We have multiple languages that are curated for our community, where they can select those options and see our website in the language that they are in their native language that they would be comfortable with," Director of Data, Visualization & Analytics Youa Lee said.

Parents can read the latest news and information from the district, there's a bulletin board of upcoming events, and it has access to the district's social media posts.

There's also a quick link to each elementary and middle school.

Important and relevant topics can be featured on every page.

"That is our primary role to make sure that families don't spend a lot of time searching for those popular topics," Lee said.

The district hopes families see that the new and improved site was created with them in mind.

"We were listening to them, their needs and what they need as families and as a community, and we always just want to make sure that this is part of being transparent, is having our information readily accessible and just to continue to be a resource for anything that they need and for all of the things that we have to offer in our incredible district," Zuniga said.

The old website will sunset at the end of June.

After that, it will automatically redirect users to the new and improved site.

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