Parent Handbook - Communications Guide
The General John Nixon PTO Communications Guide
The Nixon PTO primarily communicates with the Nixon Community electronically
via the Nixon Gazette website and email. This communication guide provides
instructions for making use of this communication mechanism for dissemination
of important information regarding school events, school policies and other
community announcements.
While there are no limitations on file sizes or graphics, photos of children
or teachers will not be allowed on the website. Also, please keep in mind
that graphic heavy pages will take longer for families to open on
the web.
The Nixon PTO requests that all submissions be sent either in the body of
an email, as MS Word attachments or as Adobe PDF attachments. Scanned copies
never come out as well as your electronic originals. Even though the school
system uses Macs, the Front Office is able to receive and open MS Word documents
just fine. If you create flyers in something other than MS Word or Adobe PDF,
let us know. We will work with you to try to translate the document into something
that can be read by all without sacrificing your formatting.
If any of you ever have questions regarding any part of the submission process,
please don’t hesitate to contact the co-chairs listed inside these pages,
or the PTO Co-Chairs.
Please visit the Nixon PTO site at: www.nixonpto.org
(you are doing so now)
The Nixon School website is at: www.nixonschool.org
(what is the difference between these two sites?)
Submission Process
To submit materials to the Nixon Gazette Website you only need submit your
information to once source: NixonSubmissions@Yahoo.com.
Submissions are accepted every week for publication on the website that week
by 10:00 am on Tuesday. All items, with some exceptions listed below, will
be posted by noon on Thursday. You will receive an automated response that
your submission has been received. All items will be posted on the Front Page
of the Website (www.NixonPTO.org) and
an e-mail reminder to review them will be sent to the Nixon Community after
the posting.
In this process you will have the opportunity to specify a headline for your
item and the heading (“Top Alerts,” “Upcoming Events,”
etc.) under which you’d like the item displayed. If you do not specify
this information then the editors will post it with a headline and under the
heading deemed most appropriate. The editors also reserve the right to override
requested headlines or heading, and to withhold materials deemed inappropriate.
To submit information to the Website or to the Thursday Notices, please complete
the following:
E-mail your material to NixonSubmissions@Yahoo.com
prior to 10:00 am on Tuesday of the week you would like the materials posted.
In your e-mail, please...
-
State your name and the name of the group you represent.
-
List your daytime contact phone number.
-
Include your material in the body of the e-mail or attach
it as a Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF document.
-
Type your suggested headline into the Subject line of the
e-mail and repeat the headline in the body of the email.
-
Make sure to state in your e-mail how many weeks your notice
should be posted.
-
State if your event needs to be posted to the Nixon calendar.
If so, copy the School Secretary, Erin Collins, as well. Her e-mail address
is
erin.collins@sudbury.k12.ma.us.
Upon receipt of your e-mail, an automated response will be sent to you advising
you that your submission has been received.
If you are attaching a document and it is not a Microsoft Word or Adobe
PDF file, please contact David Block prior to submission (dblock@choicestream.com,
978-440-8858). If you are unable to e-mail your notice, you may also submit
your notice in hard copy along with the above information directly to the
front office. Any submissions not made via e-mail or not in one of the specified
formats may experience a delay in posting of as much as one full week.
All notices must be approved by Joni Jay. The Nixon School Administrative
Secretary, Jeanette Galliardt, may contact you to discuss modifications. There
are currently no restrictions on the number of graphics that can be used.
All submissions (except those noted above) will be posted to the Nixon Gazette
website by Thursday at noon.
Please note that if you include contact information in your material to be
posted, the security of that contact information cannot be assured by the
Nixon PTO Website. If you are concerned about your contact information being
available on the Nixon PTO Website, you have two options:
-
Provide your name in your information to be posted and ask
people who would like to contact you to look up your contact information
in the Nixon Directory.
-
Create a dedicated e-mail account at a free e-mail service
(such as Yahoo!) and provide that e-mail address as your contact information.
For instance, the Bingo Night event chair may choose to create and provide
something like “NixonBingoNight@Yahoo.com”.
This submission process is posted (here) on the Nixon PTO Website as part
of the parent handbook.
Thank you! If you have any questions about the following, please contact
the appropriate person:
Content or hard copy submissions:
Jeanette Galliardt, Administrative Secretary,
jeanette.galliardt@sudbury.k12.ma.us,
978-443-1080 x1101.
All other questions:
David Block, Website Committee Chair,
dblock@choicestream.com, 978-440-8858
What Happened to the Old Nixon Gazette Process?
Prior to 2006, the Nixon Gazette was not the entire website as it is
today. The Nixon "Gazette" was published online monthly on the last Thursday
of the month. Every month it included letters from the PTO Co-Chairs, the
Principal, and the Superintendent.
All content that was published in the old monthly version of the Gazette is now published
onto the front page of the new Nixon Gazette website, and that content
will be communicated in the same format as any other announcement. For example,
when the PTO Co-Chairs letter becomes available it is posted onto the
Front Page of the website along with other announcements for that week.
Submitters to the old Gazette are encouraged to use the submission process
described above in this document moving forward.
Community Notices
Community Notices is a district-wide website dedicated to postings that are
of interest across the entire district. In the past, organizers of commuity
events were forced to submit their postings separately to each school--each
of which had its own submission and approval process. The Community Notices
process and website permits a single submission and approval to be used across
all the elementary schools and Curtis.
Community Notices are not guaranteed to be on the same weekly schedule as
Nixon postings, so if your notice is timely the website committee recommends
submission directly to Nixon. However, if you can wait a bit longer and the
notice is community-wide, you should use the Community
Notice Submission Process.
Nixon Gazette vs. Nixon School Home Page
There are two school websites available to the school administration. These
are:
Parents should feel comfortable using the Nixon Gazette (this site) as their
primary information source. When important information is posted on the Nixon
School Home Page, we always link to it from the Gazette pages.
So what is the difference and why are there two sites?
The Nixon School Home Page is hosted and managed by the Sudbury Public School
District. It is the official posting place of administrative news, school
calendars, school lunch menus and other information provided primarily at
the district level. Since the district posts this information regularly (often
for all the elementary schools at once), the Gazette links to important pages
on the district-managed site as needed.
In contrast, the Nixon Gazette website is hosted and managed by the Nixon
PTO. For a number of historical reasons all regular, weekly school-centric
communications are communicated using PTO manpower and assistance. So weekly
postings on PTO events, school news, programs, policy information and commuity
notices run through the Gazette.
Rather than force parents to visit both sites regularly, the Nixon PTO website
committee tries to make the Gazette a one-stop shop for parents by linking
to most needed and/or recent information that is on the Nixon School Home
Page. For this reason, you'll see many links from the Gazette to specific
information posted on the Nixon School Home Page.
If you find yourself on the Nixon School Home Page and wish to return to
the Gazette, click the "Nixon PTO" link on the left navigation bar.