Taking Involvement Online
A parent puts her technology skills to work to increase involvement and improve the school.
Amy McKenzie
Webmaster
Blessed Sacrament Home and School Association, Sandy, Utah
Best known for: Supplying an array of talent and technical expertise to her children’s school while enhancing the school’s volunteer process. McKenzie manages the HSA’s website and chairs a committee on the Blessed Sacrament School Board. She also assists with parent group activities and helps in both of her sons’ classrooms.
Self-taught techie: Although McKenzie hadn’t ever built a website from scratch before, last year she launched one for the HSA. Besides making volunteer opportunities more accessible to parents, the new site made it easier to track each family’s annual requirement of 20 service hours; parents no longer have to record their hours in a 5-inch binder in the school office. She acquired much of her knowledge about website tools while working on training sessions for her clients. “I had a steep learning curve and at times still get stuck on things,” she admits.
Key board position: As the chairwoman of the strategic planning committee, McKenzie and about nine other parent volunteers carry out the school’s five-year strategic plan. Goals include expanding extracurricular activities and looking into options to pay for a science and arts lab. Additionally, the school board is creating a technology committee to address work that needs to be completed.
Sharing files: McKenzie hopes to pass on the webmaster’s duties so she can dedicate more time to her school board position. “I am currently doing that training with my [website] committee and slowly have passed skills and tasks to these new folks,” she says. Also in the works is a manual for the site. It includes step-by-step instructions and images detailing how to perform administrator duties.
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Dedicated server: McKenzie worked more than 700 hours last year at Blessed Sacrament while also averaging 45 hours a week as a consultant helping companies develop instructional materials. “The only thing important to me is my family, and I feel that volunteering demonstrates to my children that they are the priority in my life,” she says. “They see me in the classroom and around the school all of the time, and they know that I care about their education and their success.”
