Case Study: K-12 - Workingarts Marketing, Inc.

K-12 education: one size does not fit all!

The problem – Rigid, bulky, un-customizable school websites look dated as soon as they are launched and cannot be altered without creating support tickets, with the hope that the ticket falls on a reliably and reasonably knowledgeable front line customer support technician.

The new problem – the leading school CMS vendor, Blackboard, was recently acquired by competitor Finalsite, and Blackboard platform technicians are being phased out while Finalsite is in the process of upselling their platform to the existing Blackboard customer base.

Our solution – to help your school district migrate to the website industry leading, standards- based, open WordPress custom and dynamic implementations away from proprietary, integrated cookie-cutter, stale structures.

Your school district's marketing platform

Our experience – working with a 20,000-student school district, with just under 30 school sites, offered a unique vantage point that has enabled us to closely monitor the overall community’s usage and reactions to website designs and functionality. As we launched customized websites, the community embraced the enhanced functionality, elegant user interface, and custom designs, leveraging newer technologies to more effectively deliver the information the sites’ visitors seek when engaging with the school district’s digital properties.

Our process – We have developed a proven process that zeroes in on the needs of the community and maps them to the district’s existing content while also pointing to the missing elements. We design an intuitive user interface that allows visitors to get to the content they seek with a minimal number of clicks, leveraging local and federated AI capabilities offered by a key technology partner, specialized in delivering the information school websites users require.

Close collaboration – The process starts with a thorough content discovery, gathering of requirements, and is followed by 7 additional phases, conceived to insure the proper completion of your website development or upgrade project. Only a close collaboration with our school partners can yield the results you seek and keep enriching the delivery of the right, updated, and relevant content to all the school community’s stakeholders.

Three Excellence Awards in Four Years!

Success – building a website is just one aspect of a school district’s publishing capabilities. Workingarts Marketing was initially hired to design and publish a quarterly school newspaper, a key component of the district’s LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Plan) requirements, resulting in the publication of the We Believe Newspaper and its associated web property. In just five years, the newspaper has won three awards for best communications platform and quality publishing, the second award confirming the first. The newspaper publication is mailed out to the entire local community to keep all stakeholders informed on the progress and challenges the school district faces while crowing its achievements in a very public forum, published in two languages.

Statewide Recognition – the We Believe Newspaper publication received three excellence awards from the California School Public Relations Association CalSPRA, in 2021, 2023, and 2024, for work published in 2020, 2022, and 2023. Workingarts was the backbone of the publishing project, responsible for the design, conducting interviews and content authoring as needed, editing, production, and overall project management of the quarterly newspaper, for six years, from the project’s initial launch in May 2018 to its last publication in March 2024.

Partner Solution: Always On!

Delivering more – the flexibility of your website’s architecture, and its built-in ability to incorporate additional native or third-party functionality, is crucial in assuring the success of your school’s public-facing marketing platform. The school or the district’s website is your window to the world; it is the single most flexible and visible marketing tool available to your organization, onto which worthy add-on functionality can be incorporated to enhance the navigation services for your visitors.

School websites are usually full of time-sensitive information about many topics — academics, sports, events, schedules, time-sensitive information, testing, reports, board meetings, etc. –, making the site’s navigation potentially bulky and complex, and although the information is indeed published, somewhere on the site, it may be difficult to access all the details when in a hurry and, especially, when navigating the site from a smartphone.

AlwaysOn has a solution for that: its AI engine surfaces the information your visitors seek and displays its deep search results, up front, with its discreetly conspicuous chatbot. The search data, that AlwaysOn continuously gathers, contributes valuable information to your website’s development team on the most relevant queries from your visitors, allowing your site to continuously evolve to better serve your website’s users. Partnering with AlwaysOn, we have learned to rely on their deep search solution to make your website AI-informed.

AI chatbot with school expertise – Help your stakeholders get answers, find information, and feel supported, 24/7 with a fully automated Artificial Intelligence powered solution that requires no setup from your end and can be launched instantly. AlwaysOn works out of the box for any school use case.
Analytics & Insights – Track actionable data beyond just clicks and page views. Get a better, more in-depth understanding of your website visitors. See what matters most to stakeholders at different times and across language preferences.

Proven School Success

Here's what our K-12 customers are saying about our work:

"Workingarts’ creativity and expertise help create communications solutions you don't even know you need; their technical skills are second to none and their product development and accessibility are on the industry's leading edge!"

"In our journey to enhance the educational experiences for our Families here at Sherman Thomas Charter Schools, we extend our deepest gratitude to the team at Workingarts for their invaluable partnership in crafting our new school website. Their dedication and expertise have modernized our digital presence and enriched our ability to connect and inspire. Together, we are fostering a community where innovation and collaboration thrive."

First, Workingarts is a first-class business. It is an absolute privilege to work with Fredo and Renee. Secondly, they are extremely professional, yet down to earth. So knowledgeable and friendly. They offer brilliant suggestions but I had the final say. They did all I asked and more, yet never rushed me. I could not be more proud of the work they produced for Madera Adult School. Thirdly, I LOVE our website. It is so eye-catching, people friendly, and I cannot get enough of it. They took us to the outer banks and beyond. We have only just begun….stay tuned for the newer and improved website coming to a place near you. Not only has it become a business partnership but also I feel as if they are part of the MAS family.

“Workingarts has been a tremendous partner to our district. They go above and beyond by not just providing us with high quality custom websites, but also being excellent thought partners and advisors on ways to improve overall communications.”

"Workingarts Marketing, Inc. continues to provide invaluable support to the Madera Unified Communications Department. Their continuous efforts to stay abreast of the new trends and needs of the community help guide the department to ensure we are proactively communicating with our stakeholders. Workingarts Marketing, Inc. continues to support the district's We Believe Newspaper, COVID-19 communications, staff training on Adobe and WordPress, and unique website development. Workingarts Marketing, Inc. also has created high-quality logos for school sites and the district office. Their efforts and talent are unmatched! Workingarts Marketing, Inc. continues to amaze us with their hard work and depth of industry knowledge. We are now entering our fifth year of working alongside them, and the district continues to receive high praises for the many projects they develop for us. Fredo and Renee were crucial partners in developing high-quality communications around COVID-19 safety protocols, which helped disseminate critical information to not only our Madera Unified community but the whole community of Madera."

"We had just received a grant to fund our marketing efforts geared towards recruiting new teachers in our district. We had little time and were looking for a company that could do it all for us: design a new trade show booth, a new folder and brochure, ads, fliers, screensavers and trade show giveaways. We also wanted a recruitment video and an interactive CD-ROM with the video, slide shows and links to online resources. Workingarts Marketing worked a small miracle for us: all the projects were successfully completed in less than 10 weeks! Not only did Workingarts Marketing do a great job in record time, they also created the most beautiful marketing tools we’ve ever had!