Community Consolidated School District 146

Situation

We were approached by an enthusiastic project team at District 146 in Tinley Park, Illinois that included the superintendent as well as information technology and administrators responsible for interviewing and hiring new teachers.

Challenge

District 146 wanted their web site to be an excellent resource for community stakeholders including students, parents, taxpayers, school board and staff…and more specifically they wanted to reign in the complicated hiring process that a district with many schools inevitably has with a paper employment application process.

Solution

Distant Horizon saw that District 146 could handle new technology and that they understood the concept of branding. Distant Horizon has always believed that a school district has much more in common with a large corporation that it does with a typical non-profit organization. By utilizing clear navigation at the district level and “sub-site” treatment of individual school information a large amount of content was able to be presented in a well organized manner. By utilizing stock photography images of children in a school setting, the administration was relieved of any waivers or photo releases that would have been necessary in order to photography actual District 146 students.

Since the employment application process for a school is pretty involved, Distant Horizon designed the system to be very forgiving to applying teachers. The first thing a new applicant does is choose a password, so then if they get interrupted or need to take a break to look up dates of employment or reference phone numbers they can come back to their application again and again without having to start over. After completing the multi-step application process, a teachers application and online resume is queued for a review hierarchy and ranking by appropriate levels of District 146 administrative staff. By enabling staff to interview candidates and record notes, separate schools and interviewing candidates are less subject to redundant job interviews. The system also integrates with Ventures For Excellence TrackView™ personnel selection online software. See http://www.venturesforexcellence.com for more information on TrackView™

Results

District 146 has enjoyed several years of successful operation with a site that has a definite corporate identity, clear navigation and sophisticated functionality that they can customize as needed…but on a day-to-day basis they maintain the HTML themselves, saving a great deal of money and keeping their staff engaged with technology. The District 146 success has led to projects at New Lenox School District 122, Summit Hill School District 161, Oaklawn-Hometown School District 123, St. Patrick’s Catholic School in St. Charles and St. Mary’s School in Mokena.

Please visit the www.ccsd146.k12.il.us site and let us know what you think!