Skip to content
Now accepting Q2 projects — limited slots available. Get started →
Multi-Site District HubTeacher & Parent PortalsADA/WCAG Compliant

Your IT Director Just Spent 11 Hours on a Single Faculty Photo Update

If you're a district tech lead supporting 30+ school sites on WordPress Multisite, you've hit the ceiling where one principal's homepage takeover crashes the network.

Replace WordPress Multisite and Finalsite with a single Next.js application -- district hub, school microsites, teacher portals, and parent portals in one deployment.

$135-360K/yr
Finalsite Cost
Recurring license for 45-school district
$60-100K
One-Time Build
Next.js platform replacing Finalsite -- break-even in 3-6 months
$45/mo
Hosting Cost
Vercel + Supabase for 50-school district
1 App
Architecture
45 school sites from one Next.js codebase + Supabase RLS
What Your District Actually Gets -- And What Finally Stops Breaking

Your district homepage goes live. A parent lands on the elementary school page. A teacher edits her class schedule. A bus route updates across three languages. All of it fires from one Next.js application--not 45 separate WordPress installs fighting over plugins. Your IT team manages one security surface, one brand system, one deploy. Teachers update their own pages through role-scoped dashboards. Parents filter lunch menus and bus schedules by school and day on their phones. Board meeting agendas publish with searchable PDFs that meet ADA requirements. Adding a new school means adding a database row--not spinning up another site for your two-person IT team to patch and pray over every Tuesday.

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Your 2-person IT team is spending 20+ hours a week on WordPress Multisite maintenance -- updates, plugin conflicts, broken themes spread across 45 sites
Risk: Staff burn out. Security holes pile up on every school site that hasn't been patched yet.
Teachers stopped requesting page updates because tickets sit for 3 weeks before IT gets to them
Risk: Class info goes stale, parents stop checking the site, and teachers end up scattered across Google Docs trying to fill the gap.
Your district site scores a 38 on Lighthouse mobile
Risk: Parents can't find bus schedules, lunch menus, or snow day alerts on their phones. They miss critical info, call the front office instead, and prospective families notice.
ADA/WCAG compliance is all over the place because every school runs different themes and plugins
Risk: K-12 ADA lawsuits are picking up -- one inaccessible page on any school site creates district-wide legal exposure.
Finalsite charges $3–8K per school per year
Risk: Across 45 schools, that's $135–360K annually for a platform you don't own. Multi-year contracts lock you in, costs go up automatically every year, and you're essentially renting your own content back from them.
30% of your district families speak a language other than English, but your site is English-only
Risk: Federal Title III requirements go unmet. Those families disengage, and they don't come back.

How We Build This Right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

District Hub + School Microsites

One Next.js application handles the district homepage and 45+ school pages through /schools/[name] routing. Superintendent message, board meetings, enrollment, employment, and news live at the district level. Principal message, staff directory, calendar, lunch menu, and PTA info live at the school level. One deployment. One brand system.

Teacher Self-Service Portal

Teachers log in and edit their own class page -- syllabus, homework, announcements, resources -- without touching IT. Supabase Auth with Row Level Security means a teacher sees only their class, a principal sees their whole school, and district admin sees everything.

Parent Portal with SSO

Parents log in once and get their child's school, upcoming events, cafeteria menu, bus route, and teacher contact info. Single sign-on ties into your existing SIS for grades and attendance. One login covers the whole district, no matter how many schools their kids attend.

ADA/WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance

Semantic HTML, ARIA labels, keyboard navigation, and focus management are baked into every component. One codebase enforces compliance everywhere -- not left to 45 separate WordPress themes each drifting in their own direction.

Multi-Language Translation Engine

i18n support for 3–10 languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Somali, and more. Batch translation runs about $22 per language -- your entire district in 5 languages for $110. WPML costs $199/year plus ongoing per-page translation on top of that.

Event Calendar + Emergency Alerts

District-wide and school-specific events with filters by school and type -- academic, sports, arts, PTA, board meetings. RSVP functionality built in. Push notifications for closures, snow days, and emergencies go out instantly.

What We Build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Stop burning 20+ hours weekly patching 45 separate WordPress sites with conflicting plugins and broken themes

Deploy 45 schools from one Next.js codebase--adding a school takes one database row, not another site build

End the 3-week ticket backlog where teacher page requests pile up and class info goes stale

Give teachers, principals, and district admins role-based dashboards enforced at the database level with Supabase RLS

Fix the mobile disaster--your district site scores 38 on Lighthouse and parents can't find snow day alerts on their phones

Let parents search staff by school, department, and role--plus apply for open teaching positions through structured forms

Close the ADA compliance gaps scattered across 45 school sites running different themes before the lawsuits arrive

Generate school pages statically at build time with sub-second loads and ISR revalidation during enrollment season

Break the Finalsite lock-in costing your district $135–360K annually to rent back your own content

Publish filterable lunch menus and bus routes that work on phones--no more PDFs that break on mobile screens

Serve the 30% of families who don't speak English and stop missing federal Title III requirements

Meet public records requirements with board meeting agendas, searchable minutes archives, and accessible live stream links

Built on a Modern, Secure Stack

Next.jsSupabaseVercelTailwind CSSnext-intlSupabase AuthRow Level SecurityPostgreSQLResendVercel Analytics

Our Development Process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

01

District Discovery & Content Audit

Weeks 1-2

We audit every existing school site, map content types, identify role requirements, catalog languages, and document SIS/SSO integration points. You get a full architecture spec and content migration plan before we write a line of code.

02

Platform Architecture & Design System

Weeks 3-5

We build the district brand system -- typography, colors, component library -- and the database schema for schools, staff, events, and class pages. Supabase Auth and RLS policies get defined and tested. You approve everything in Figma before we move on.

03

Core Platform Build

Weeks 6-10

District hub, school microsites, teacher portal, parent portal, event calendar, staff directory, and multi-language support get built and deployed to staging. Each school gets its localized content structure set up.

04

Content Migration & Training

Weeks 11-13

We migrate content from WordPress Multisite or Finalsite into the new platform. Teachers and office staff get hands-on training -- editing class pages, posting events, updating menus. Principals learn their school dashboard.

05

Launch & Post-Launch Support

Week 14+

DNS cutover, 301 redirects from old URLs, a Lighthouse audit across every school page, and 30 days of post-launch support. We watch performance, handle edge cases, and make sure every school page hits 95+ on accessibility.

Social Animal

Ready to discuss your your it director just spent 11 hours on a single faculty photo update project?

Get a free quote

District platforms from $30,000

One-time build. $45/mo hosting. 30-day post-launch support included. See all packages →

Get Your Quote
Related Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

WordPress Multisite gives each school its own installation — its own theme, plugins, and maintenance headache. This platform runs one Next.js application with dynamic routing. Adding a school means adding a database row, not spinning up a new site. One codebase to maintain, one security surface to watch, one deployment that pushes updates to all 45+ schools at once.
Yes. Teachers log into a straightforward editing interface where they see only their assigned class page. They can update their syllabus, post homework, share announcements, and upload resources. Supabase Row Level Security enforces this at the database level — a teacher literally can't see or edit another teacher's content. Principals can review all class pages within their school.
We use next-intl for internationalization routing, then batch-translate content using AI translation services at roughly $22 per language. A 5-language district — English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic — runs about $110 for the initial translation. New content gets translated automatically. WPML costs $199/year, plus manual translation fees per page on top of that.
Every school page shares the same component library, so ADA/WCAG 2.1 AA compliance is enforced by the architecture itself. Semantic HTML, ARIA attributes, keyboard navigation, and focus management are built into each component once and applied everywhere. WordPress Multisite lets each school drift into its own compliance state. This approach delivers consistent 95+ Lighthouse accessibility scores across every site.
A typical 45-school district goes from kickoff to launch in 13–14 weeks. Content migration from WordPress or Finalsite is handled programmatically — we extract structured content from your existing platform, map it to the new schema, and import in bulk. Staff training runs in weeks 11–13 so your team is ready before go-live.
Hosting on Vercel runs about $45/month for the whole district. Static generation keeps compute minimal even when enrollment season hammers traffic. No per-school licensing, no annual contracts, no plugin update cycles. You own the platform. Your staff handles ongoing content updates through the built-in portals.
More solutions

Explore related industries

Need enterprise scale?

200+ employee company? Complex multi-tenant, auction, or multi-location requirement? We have a dedicated enterprise capability track.

View Enterprise Hub

Get Your District Assessment

Tell us about your district. We'll deliver an architecture proposal and quote within 48 hours.

Or book a 30-minute call
Get in touch

Let's build
something together.

Whether it's a migration, a new build, or an SEO challenge — the Social Animal team would love to hear from you.

Get in touch →