MASSENA -- The Massena Central School District has a new website that school officials hope will better link students, teachers and parents via the internet.

Mike Allen, the district technology director, and Rebekah Grim from BOCES gave the school board an update at their Thursday night meeting.

Grim said it includes a new calendar feature for both the whole district and individual buildings. Parents can print them by the month.

It also allows school officials to put an urgent notice on the homepage, so it pops up as soon as someone logs on, which could be used to announce snow days or emergencies.

Although the function isn’t yet enabled, teachers will eventually be able to link their Google Classroom accounts to their names in the staff directory.

“It’s a platform from Google where teachers … can communicate with students and share directly with the students … it’s being utilized more and more,” Grim said.

Allen said they got the new site because the former web host would have ended up charging substantially more to continue their service, and the new host was offering an improved format.

Board of Education members seemed impressed with the new site, which at mcs.k12.ny.us.

“It’s quite visually appealing, too. You’ve got lots of photos and the scrolling,” Trustee Paul Haggett said, referring to the photo carousel on the homepage.

“The features you describe sound really helpful,” board President Paul Bronchetti said.