A strike is a huge event for a school district. Whether it’s a teacher strike or an educational assistant strike, the threat of labour disruptions cause increased uncertainty throughout your community, which relies on your website to stay informed. Here’s some tips on how you can use different website features to be transparent with your community and help parents find the information they need.
Before the Strike
Setting yourself up for success is key. When a strike looks imminent, it’s a good idea to review your list of school website users so you know which sites you’ll have to take responsibility for during the strike. If your system allows you to, create a hidden page with all the information. Should the strike be declared, you can easily publish all the necessary information instantly.
Review School Webmasters
Who’s responsible for each of your school websites? Check to see which school webmasters might be going on strike. Is there someone else in the school with the knowledge to take over the website during the strike, or will you be needing to monitor and update these sites yourself? You’ll want to ensure that you’ll be able to keep everyone in your community informed, so knowing which school websites won’t be monitored is essential.
Review Contact Forms
Most K-12 websites will have a Contact Us form where parents can send a message to staff. Where do those submissions get sent to? While you’re reviewing your school webmasters, it’s also a good idea to review who receives these messages. If that person is poised to go on strike, make a note, so you can go back and change the contact later, ensuring that messages from parents will still be passed along to staff.
Set up a Hidden Page
A common strategy for crisis communication is to create a dedicated webpage that centralizes all the resources, information, and updates related to the crisis in one place. Your website should let you create a page, but keep it hidden until you’re ready to publish it. This feature lets you pull together all the pieces your community needs and have the page ready to go, so when the strike is declared you can publish your page with a click.
Put Together a Centralized Page
When putting together your Strike Page, use the tools built into your website to make it easier for parents to find the information they need. If there’s a specific piece of information that’s most important, do you have the tools to give it more prominence on the website, such as by changing the background colour, so the website visually cues its significance? Can you use accordions for FAQs so your page isn’t a mess of text? As always, it’s best practice to use headings and subheadings so it’s easier for visitors to skim over content.
If you know when the strike will start, you may even be able to schedule your page to publish automatically.
When the Strike is Declared
When the strike is announced, it’s time to publish your centralized page and make it as easy as possible for your community to find. Use the tools in your website to give the page the best visibility, and ensure that information is shared to school websites too.
Publish the Strike Page
Publish your centralized page, and ensure that it’ll be indexed by search engines such as Google. If you can, share the page directly to school websites, so it’s published throughout your entire district at once. If you can’t add the page directly to your school websites, add a link or create a redirect instead, so you only have to update one page.
Direct Traffic to the Page
Use the tools built into your website to help direct visitors to the page. This can include adding the page in the top-level page of the menu, adding a button on the homepage, and adding a notice or pop-up throughout the website. You can also add a News Post to your News Blog, (which you might be able to share simultaneously throughout your district), then create a redirect so the post goes to your Strike Page. If you can, make the News Post “featured” so it stays on your homepage, even as you add other posts.
Change Contact Forms
Review your list of contacts from earlier. Which websites need to have a new contact added for their school website Contact Us Form, and who should it be? Update these emails as soon as possible so that communications from parents are being sent to the correct person and not someone who’s on strike.
During the Strike
Know which schools websites you’ll have to monitor and update during the strike. Create a dedicated blog to share information and updates for the strike.
Manage School Websites
Which of your school websites are without a webmaster now? Are you now responsible for adding and updating these websites? Determine what content needs to be shared to these websites during the strike. Can you centralize the publishing of this content through your district website or will you have to update these websites individually?
Use a Dedicated News Blog for Updates
Some website providers will let you have more than one News Blog for your website. Can you add a News Blog to the Strike Page? Adding a News Blog to this page allows leadership to add regular updates, all in one place, specifically related to the strike so the community knows they can rely on regular updates from your district. Parents can review previous updates and catch up on any details they might have missed. A dedicated News Blog includes the time stamps for each update, showing your district is communicating regularly and helps to build trust with parents.
When the Strike is Over
When the Strike is over, ensure you’re returning your websites back to the status quo.
Remove the Strike Page
When your Strike Page is ready to come down, ensure you’re also removing any buttons from the home page and any redirects. If you want to keep a record of the content and communications, set the page back to a hidden status to preserve the content without confusing any website visitors.
Update Contact Forms
Which school Contact Us forms did you update? Should they stay the way they are now or revert back to their pre-strike contact? Check to ensure that these forms are sent to the appropriate contact.
Strikes can create a lot of work for your communications team, but your website should give you the tools you need to effectively keep your community up-to-date before, during, and after the strike.