A Brief Look at the School

Charleston Montessori school educates children in a way that inspires intellectual curiosity and creativity. Established in 2010, the school outgrew its original home in a local church and relocated in 2014 to its current space that features mixed-age classrooms and a host of educational programs and opportunities for children ages 3 to 12.

The school’s continual growth quickly outpaced their original website, which in recent years suffered from stagnation, and it no longer reflected the school’s message to parents about its wealth of opportunities. Realizing they needed some website improvements, the staff called on Jamie at Bricks Without Straw for help.

More Than a Few Tweaks

Sarah Galaska, who wears a few different hats at the school and is the website coordinator, had known Jamie for years. “I’d seen a lot of the work he’d done with other organizations and I thought he’d be a good fit for what our school needed,” she explains. What sparked her initial phone call to him? “I couldn’t figure out how to put an Instagram feed on the old website.”

Sarah and the other school staff thought that Jamie would make some worthwhile suggestions for improving their existing website; they were expecting him to recommend tweaks and upgrades. But Jamie’s conversation with Sarah and presentation to the board and staff really opened their eyes to what would be possible with a completely redone and truly functional website. “He described all that the website could do in terms of representing the school – like parents being able to fill out all their forms online, enhancing our parent communication capabilities, and making the website like another employee who was always on duty – all of this was very appealing!” The staff immediately realized that hiring Jamie to totally redesign their website is what they needed to do.

A Memorable Process, A Functional Tool

Jamie met the teachers and other staff, briefly toured the school, then worked mostly behind the scenes to rebuild the website. “He really hit it off with the teachers,” Sarah remembers. “He even offered to come back and do a presentation for the kids about Japan!” Jamie also has clients in Japan, and the staff was impressed to know that he was willing to share with the school children about his experiences there.

Though he worked completely behind the scenes, Jamie communicated with the board regarding his progress and what additional improvements were in store. Fran Norman, director of the school, attended Jamie’s first presentation to the board and staff. “He was very knowledgeable, personable, and on-target. We were real pleased with what he had to offer,” she says. One of the teachers, Jennifer McGee, was most impressed by how Jamie could take the staff’s verbal information and transform it into real functionality for them. “He gave us a website that answered the question, How can we get our various messages across to prospective parents? He made our website into a real tool for communication so that parents know answers before they come to us, which keeps us from repeating information.” Jennifer loves the results: “I never knew that our website could be the kind of tool that it is for us now!”

Great Benefits, Inside and Out

Current and prospective parents can now communicate easily with Charleston Montessori School staff about enrollment or any other issues. All forms are now online and once submitted, information goes directly to school staff. “Our new website gives parents a great sense of how our school operates,” Sarah adds.  “Now they know what to expect, and they have a better sense of how the school day operates and what kinds of events we have.”

Perhaps Jennifer Foster, office manager, says it best: “Now, instead of explaining our basic policies and other simple things to parents, we can refer them to our website to keep them updated on everything -- it’s just great!”

Bricks Without Straw is a digital agency and design agency based in South Charleston, WV United States and Ota, Tokyo, Japan.

We offer a range of web design services including: web development, e-commerce services and email marketing. We also offer a range of graphic design services including logo design and exhibition stands.

We love working with clients of all sizes in a range of industry sectors, creating and implementing inspiring and hard working concepts and campaigns for business-business and business-consumer clients.

Valicia Leary

Bricks Without Straw has continued to exceed our expectations with their design work, support and attention to detail. We would highly recommend their services. They have a wonderful team and we enjoy our working relationship with them.

Carol Fulks

Bricks Without Straw has continued to exceed our expectations with their design work, support and attention to detail. We would highly recommend their services. They have a wonderful team and we enjoy our working relationship with them.

Patti Hamliton

Bricks Without Straw is bringing our association into the 21st Century! He brings us ideas and innovation for our web site and other tools of technology that help us enhance our image and our message.

Rebecca McPhail

Bricks Without Straw has continued to exceed our expectations with their design work, support and attention to detail. We would highly recommend their services. They have a wonderful team and we enjoy our working relationship with them.

Bill Raney

Jamie is one of the most committed and energetic professionals we have ever worked with over the years. He seems to work all the time with full 24-7 accessibility and immediate response. Bricks Without Straw has raised our collective confidence for maximizing opportunities in today’s world. We simply could not have done it without them.

Jan Vineyard

The demands and responsibilities to our members mandate that the online presence of our associations and our internet capabilities are reliable and seamless. Add creativity to that mix and one gets the complete package with Jamie Summers-Brown and his staff at Bricks without Straw.