New DeKalb Middle School Website Designed to Keep Parents More Informed and Involved

DeKalb Middle School administrators and faculty believe maintaining parent-teacher communication throughout the school year is the key to student success
By communicating effectively with parents, teachers form a cooperative team that has the students’ best interests at heart.
To help keep the lines of communication open, DMS has updated its website at www.dekalbmiddleschoolsaints.com to keep parents more involved and better informed about school events, assignments, and many other school related activities.
“We’ve done a total revamp of our website this year,” said DMS Principal Randy Jennings. “We are trying to utilize that to get as much information out to our parents as we can or to anyone who wants to know more about our school,” he said.
Each teacher has his or her own individual page on the school website that parents may access to keep up to date. “They can go to every single teacher’s page. And they can email teachers through the new website as well. That’s the best way to look at individual teachers and to look at what’s going on in our school on a weekly and monthly basis,” said Assistant DMS Principal Amanda Dakas.
“Every single Friday teachers are required before they leave school to go in and update their individual page for the upcoming week. Parents can go in on the weekend and be able to see what’s coming up in their child’s class,” Dakas said.
The school website also offers other links for students, parents, and teachers to the latest information on school news and sports, a calendar of events, school handbook, teacher resources, research materials, clubs and organizations, and photos of various activities.
“There are so many things to access on the school’s website,” explained Dakas. ” There are some places that are just for teachers. There are some places for students and some places for parents. If you go to the left hand side and scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, and special education and from that it will give you a list of all the teachers in that grade. From that you can click on that individual teacher and that’s where you’re able to see what’s going on in the individual classrooms, such as whether there is a special project or a test coming up. We gave teachers the flexibility to be as detailed or not as they wanted to be. The only request we had was that they communicate. This gives parents the ability to go in, plan ahead and help their child be successful,” she said.
Melissa Ruch, DMS PTO President said the school website also has a link just for the PTO. “We’re going to be having our annual fundraiser coming up for the chili supper,” said Ruch. ” It used to be a spaghetti supper but we’ve decided this year to go back to having a chili supper. We’re still going to have a silent auction that night and we’re also going to have a cake walk. We’re implementing some other things too possibly that night which will be on Saturday November 23 starting at 4:00 p.m. Kids will be getting the tickets for that before fall break to start selling those tickets for that event,” said Ruch.
Again to access the DeKalb Middle School website visit www.dekalbmiddleschoolsaints.com. All the other schools in the county have their own websites as well. You may access them all by typing in www.dekalbschools.net. From that you can go to each individual school.