| Project Name: | Website Makeover |
| Cost: | $5,000 — $10,000 |
| Recurring?: | No |
| Description: | We like Innisfree’s website a lot, much of the formatting of which was generously donated by Tom Rue, a highly skilled but non-professional website designer. But the website currently lacks certain functionalities, not to mention some “bells and whistles,” that could really be much better provided by a professional.
Most importantly, we want to host a wide array of resources for parents to download. Key among these are public documents that we’ve obtained from school districts using the Open Public Records Act. And key among those are settlement agreements with school districts. That is, it’s easy to understand the value to a parent in a dispute with a school district the ability to review settlement agreements that their school district has entered into with other parents. These agreements are, by law, available for public inspection upon request. But many school districts improperly refuse to disclose them to parents, forcing them to either hire a lawyer or engage in a time-intensive battle for access without the benefit of legal counsel. We’ve been gathering these agreements by making requests, and would like to post them on our website, so that parents don’t have to go through the difficult process of requesting them from the district. But we need help setting up the functionality to host large quantities of such documents. Just as importantly, we don’t want to give access to this database (as we build it up) to anyone but those who are friendly to our constituents.[1] So we want to add layers of security to the website, to control with granularity who can access which areas of it. |
| Beneficiaries: | Innisfree itself, and indirectly all of its constituents. |
[1] For example, there are many “budget hawks” who believe that too much money is spent on special education. These documents are good propaganda tools for them, especially when cherry-picked and costs are described out of context from a child’s need or an explanation of the legal obligation to provide services. Such “hawks” are, of course, free to obtain the documents themselves through the same legal channels that Innisfree uses. But we have no desire to assist them in their efforts at the expense of our constituents.