The school board spent $11,000.00 to lease a web-based event calendar for a year. If you don't mind, because Margaret Smith recommended a "renewal", I can only assume they have leased this for a minimum of two years. I'm now going to use the figure of $22,000.00 (minimum)

Let's start here, this is my domain and it is kind of a shell where I use it for testing things like this. I've taken the liberty of installing an event calendar here:

http://ourvolusiaschools.org/community-event-calendar/

If you go there and click on the event listed for November 20th.. the "Organizational School Board Meeting", you'll get a better idea of how it works. I've included something that the $22,000.00 (minimum) school board event calendar doesn't appear to include, and that is a map to the event.. see for yourself by clicking on that date.

It may not look the same visually (and purposely), but let me run down the list of options for the administrator of this event calender. Options include:

Create an event or regularly occurring events, create complex event descriptions with html and images, allow registration for the event, give pre-approval for user event registrations and allow users to create and manage events, subscribe to feeds of the events with any popular organizational tool (like Outlook), there are options to limit the events being displayed, by location, category etc. Full and small sized calendars for placement on the website, Google maps integration, booking options that include a ticket system.. payments.

Yep.. we can even charge and collect payment for facilities rentals.

Want a searchable list?

http://ourvolusiaschools.org/events-search/

Event submission?

http://ourvolusiaschools.org/event-submission/

A quick look at events in list format?

http://ourvolusiaschools.org/events/categories/general/

Small calendar for the sidebar of the website? Look at the lower right side of this page:

http://ourvolusiaschools.org/

I could go on.. but just how much more would you need it to do?

So there have it, Mr "engaged".. with a big cup of coffee to keep me company, I've just saved the taxpayers (us!) $22,000.00 (minimum) and I have yet to change out of my pajamas. This is about 1-1/2 hours worth of work.. there is much more that I could do if I wasn't in a hurry to give you an example.

It is not just a complaint, it is a reality.

Margaret Smith and the sitting school board members need to GO.