Private & Islamic schools · Website maintenance

Website maintenance for private schools

A private school website makes a sales argument every day of the year, and it makes it to a family comparing you with a free charter two miles away. The argument falls apart on small things. The tuition page shows last year's number with this year's date. The admissions page offers tours for a season that ended in March. The staff page lists a kindergarten teacher who moved to Texas in June. None of it looks like neglect to the office, which is busy with the things that keep a school open. All of it looks like neglect to a parent at ten at night, who assumes the school is as careful with their child as it is with its own front page.

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We built the websites for Iqra School, a PreK-4 private Islamic school in Minnesota, and Darul Uloom New York, an Islamic institute founded in 1997, and our school work has always been charter and private, never district.

We built the websites for Iqra School, a PreK-4 private Islamic school in Minnesota, and for Darul Uloom New York, an Islamic institute founded in 1997, and our school work has always been charter and private, never district. In both cases the person who keeps the site current is an office administrator who also answers the phone and chases immunization records, or a board member doing it on weeknights. A care plan takes the standing work off that person: tuition and re-enrollment pages updated the day the board approves them, the homepage notice the IRS expects kept where it belongs, Ramadan hours and Eid closures posted when the dates are confirmed, software patched every week, and a written record of every login so the site belongs to the school rather than to whoever set it up.

What goes stale first

  • 01Tuition and aid pages quietly describe last yearTuition is the number a family looks for before they call, and the page that shows it is updated once, in the rush after the board sets rates, and then forgotten. By January it shows a figure the office no longer quotes, with a sibling discount that changed and a payment plan that moved to a new portal. We update the number the day it is approved, keep the aid application and the FACTS or Gradelink links pointing at the right place, and check the whole page before re-enrollment opens.
  • 02The homepage notice that is not allowed to scroll awayA 501(c)(3) school can satisfy the IRS requirement to publicize its racially nondiscriminatory policy by displaying the notice on its primary homepage at all times, under Revenue Procedure 2019-22. A link to another page, a carousel slide, a dropdown, or hover text does not count, and Form 990 Schedule E asks whether you did it. A redesign, a new theme, or a well-meaning volunteer trimming the footer removes it without anyone noticing. We check it every month.
  • 03Admissions dates for a season that endedTour dates, the application deadline, the re-enrollment window, and whether a grade has seats are the four facts a prospective family checks first, and they change every year. Most private school sites update them in a hurry in October and never again, so a family reading in April is offered tours from February. We put next year's dates in as soon as the office sets them and take the old ones down the day they pass.
  • 04Ramadan hours, Eid closures, and the calendar that was a PDFAn Islamic school runs a shorter day through Ramadan, suspends lunch, moves conferences, and closes for Eid on a date confirmed a day or two ahead. A calendar posted as a PDF in August cannot hold any of that, and the Hijri dates have to sit beside the Gregorian ones for families who follow both. We keep one live calendar the office can change from a phone, with the projected Ramadan and Eid dates placed a year ahead and corrected when the moon is sighted.

The year on the website

This is the calendar we keep for a private school site on a care plan. Your dates go in during onboarding; the work happens without anyone on your staff having to remember it.

  1. AugustHandbook, calendar, bell schedule, supply lists, uniform policy, and staff directory posted; the homepage nondiscrimination notice confirmed in place; Hijri dates for the year added beside the Gregorian calendar.
  2. September – OctoberImmunization report to the state within 60 days of the first day, and for Minnesota nonpublic schools the October 1 letter of intent to the resident district; open house and tour dates published; portal links to FACTS, Gradelink, or Sycamore tested.
  3. November – DecemberNew York nonpublic schools report BEDS data by November 13 and the immunization survey and fire-safety report in mid-December; the board sets next year's tuition and the page changes the same week; re-enrollment contracts and the aid application go live.
  4. January – FebruaryAdmissions deadline, sibling priority, and waitlist status posted; Minnesota families look for the K-12 Education Subtraction figures at tax time; Ramadan 1448 is projected to begin February 8, 2027, so shortened hours and prayer schedules go up the week before.
  5. March – AprilEid al-Fitr closure, projected for March 9, 2027, announced the night it is confirmed; graduation, spring program, and summer camp pages published; tour season ends and the dates come down.
  6. May – JuneEid al-Adha, projected for May 16, 2027; last day, report card dates, and summer office hours posted; staff who are leaving removed and new hires added; the year's PDFs archived.
  7. JulyHandbook and tuition revisions, the next year's calendar, photo releases renewed before new pictures are published, and a full speed and accessibility pass before August traffic.

What we handle every month

  • Tuition, sibling rates, aid application, and payment-plan links updated the week they change
  • Admissions dates, tour booking, and per-grade seat status posted and retired on time
  • IRS nondiscrimination notice confirmed on the homepage every month, after any theme change
  • Ramadan hours, Eid closures, and Hijri dates posted when confirmed, from your text
  • Handbook, calendar, bell schedule, and staff directory changed the week they change
  • Portal links to FACTS, Gradelink, Sycamore, or Brightwheel tested monthly
  • New student photos checked against consent lists before they go live
  • Weekly software updates, daily backups, uptime and SSL monitoring, forms tested monthly

Worth knowing

What a private school actually has to keep on its website

Less than a charter school, and one thing more precisely. Minnesota nonpublic schools report rather than post: a letter of intent to the resident district by October 1 under Minn. Stat. 120A.24 and an immunization report within 60 days of the term starting under 121A.15. The federal ADA Title III has no web regulation, and schools controlled by religious organizations are exempt from Title III altogether, though the Minnesota Human Rights Act still covers educational institutions. The one hard website rule is the IRS one: a 501(c)(3) school may meet its duty to publicize a racially nondiscriminatory policy by displaying the notice on its primary homepage at all times, and Revenue Procedure 2019-22 says a link, a carousel, a dropdown, or hover text does not satisfy it. Accreditors such as MNSAA, Cognia, ISACS, and CISNA expect mission, program, admissions, and policies to be published and current. New York nonpublic schools add state reporting deadlines each fall and winter. General information, not legal advice.

What it costs

Care plans for private schools

The same three plans as everywhere else on the site; the one we usually recommend for this sector is marked. Each shows the market range for that level of service, and your own number is a fixed monthly quote. Hosting and the domain stay in your name, and there is no contract.

Protect

Keep it running

A site that rarely changes but has to stay up, patched, and backed up. Hosting stays in your account; we manage it.

What this level costs elsewhere

$50 – $100 / month

Entry plans with updates, backups, and monitoring but no content time ran $50 to $100 a month at the three Twin Cities agencies that publish one, and $59 to $99 at four national WordPress maintenance vendors, read October 2026.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
30 min / month
We respond
2 business days
  • Weekly core, plugin, and theme updates, taken after a fresh backup
  • Daily off-site backups, kept for 30 days, restore tested once a year
  • Uptime monitoring every 5 minutes, with the alert going to us
  • Malware scanning, firewall, and login hardening
  • SSL, domain, and hosting renewals tracked so nothing lapses
  • + 3 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Protect

Update

Keep it current

Most common

An organization whose site has to change most months, and nobody on staff whose job it is: schools, nonprofits, clinics, mosques, busy small businesses.

What this level costs elsewhere

$349 – $474 / month

Twin Cities plans that include about two hours of content work a month were published at $349 to $474 in October 2026; plans with 30 to 60 minutes ran $149 to $250.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
2 hours / month
We respond
Next business day
  • Everything in Protect
  • Two hours of content work each month: news, events, calendars, staff, photos, PDFs
  • New pages built from copy you send, inside the hours
  • Contact, application, and donation forms tested end to end every month
  • Broken links, 404s, and redirects checked and fixed monthly
  • + 4 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Update

Grow

Keep it growing

An organization that wants the site worked on, not just kept: new content written and posted, local search watched, and a monthly conversation about what to do next.

What this level costs elsewhere

$749 – $850 / month

The two Twin Cities agencies that publish a four- to five-hour plan priced it at $749 and $850 a month in October 2026, usually without the writing and search monitoring included here.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
5 hours / month
We respond
Same business day
  • Everything in Update
  • Five hours a month, including writing: one article or two to four new or rewritten pages
  • Google Business Profile posts, photo updates, and review responses drafted for you
  • Monthly analytics and Search Console review, with a 30-minute call
  • Landing pages for a program, campaign, enrollment season, or Give to the Max Day
  • + 3 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Grow

Proof

Private schools sites we have built

Real organizations, live sites you can go and look at. Every one carries the kind of calendar, form, and posting load a care plan exists for.

Iqra School website design by TayoPro
EducationPrivate school

Iqra School

Iqra School is a PreK–4 private Islamic school committed to helping students realize their utmost potential. Iqra sets a benchmark for excellence through a comprehensive, core-knowledge curriculum, and its students are expected to exceed the State of Minnesota's academic standards.

Darul Uloom New York website design by TayoPro
EducationIslamic institute

Darul Uloom New York

Darul Uloom New York, founded in 1997, set out to create an institution where children are educated in a humble Islamic environment with traditional Islamic values, coupled with a firm background in secular education, to produce the Muslim scholars of the future.

FAQ

Private schools: common questions

Can our office still post closures and announcements itself?

Yes, and it should, because an Eid closure or a snow day cannot wait for anyone's inbox. We train two people on exactly those tasks, announcement bar and calendar, and keep the editor simple enough to use from a phone at nine at night. The care plan takes the standing work: tuition pages, admissions dates, the handbook, the staff directory, the monthly check on the homepage notice, and the software updates nobody at a school should have to think about.

What does website maintenance cost for a private school?

We do not publish a rate card. After a free look at your site you get a fixed monthly price in writing, and it does not move unless you ask for more. For context, Twin Cities agencies that publish care plans, read in October 2026, charge $50 to $100 a month for updates and backups alone and $149 to $474 for plans with one to two hours of content work each month. Most private schools land at the second level of service, which is our Update plan.

We cannot publish photos of most students. Does maintenance still work?

Yes, and it is one of the reasons to have someone checking. Photo consent varies by family and by grade, and many Islamic schools limit images of older students. Every photo that goes up on a plan is checked against the consent list the office keeps, and the pages that cannot carry faces are built to carry classroom detail, student work, and teacher quotes instead. A site that needs photos you cannot take goes empty by October; one planned around the policy stays full.

Our site was built by a board member who has since left. Can you take it over?

That describes most of the school sites we see. We start with a free thirty-minute look, then a full backup and a written inventory of every login, the domain, the host, the content system, analytics, and the forms, moved into the school's own name. Sites we did not build usually need a few hours of cleanup first, quoted in writing before the first month. If the site is beyond saving we will say so and quote a rebuild instead.

Do you handle the FACTS, Gradelink, or Sycamore portal too?

We keep the link to it correct and obvious, which is the part that goes wrong. The portal itself stays with its vendor, and we will not rebuild what it already does. What we check monthly is that the button on your site lands a parent in the right place, that the tuition page and the portal agree on the payment plan, and that a phone visitor can reach it in one tap. If a tool you pay for duplicates what the site does, we will tell you.

Read next

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