Senior Ben Ross, is the lead website developer of the Schoolnest organization and manager of PHS’s schedule page. The Schoolnest page has been widely used throughout PHS since its creation in 2022, and has now expanded into an organization that can accommodate new schools who want a similar page.
When opening the PHS schedule website, a big timer appears at the top left of the screen, showing how much time is left in the current class period. Along with that, the entire school day schedule is shown below. The timer is set to cater to special schedules as well, like half days or advisory periods. There are additional portions below with an event calendar and club billboard as well. The website is hosted by a company called Cloudflare which holds the domain, but Ross is the one who writes, tests, and sends out the code that controls the site as a part of the Sparrows organization.
English Teacher Ms. Debora Speirs uses Schoolnest, and when asked how it impacts her, she said “The schedule impacts me greatly I am heavily dependent on it… when I am actively teaching, the schedule helps me stay on pace with my lesson.”
The Schoolnest website was created by Daniel Mathew, PHS class of 2024, during his junior year after being prompted by Mr. Mark Estep. During the 2022-2023 school year, Falcon Time was a twenty minute work time for students, which rotated periods every day. Estep suggested Mathew create a website to help teachers stay on top of the daily changes. From there, the website spread to the student body and has stayed in use ever since.
During Mathew’s senior year, he decided to expand the Schoolnest website.
“We started to realize that this idea was something that could be useful for a lot more schools,” said Ross.
This led to the Schoolnest greater organization, now re-branded as Sparrows, which is what our current school schedule runs on, but also allows any school to sign up to host their schedule. Sparrows allows other schools to have a page just like PHS’s, with a period countdown, calendar, and club announcements.
“We have now gotten to the point where we have about 10 schools using [Sparrows],” stated Ross. “People in [other] schools signed up for it, they have [their] schedule on it.”
The Sparrows organization contains around 30 students, most in high school, and with Mathew still in a managerial position while in college.
“There are teams… working on outreach. There are teams working on the app. There are teams in communication with the MCPS Board of Education to ensure that our domain stays unblocked, which has been an issue before,” Ross said.
While Ross’s website seems to be a relatively simple concept on the surface, it requires constant maintenance and upkeep, even if Ross is absent from school. Ross recalls a certain day when he was sick and woke up to an email notifying him that the PSAT Schedule had changed at the last minute, and he had to adjust it immediately.
“[I]knew putting it in on (the day of the test) would not be a good idea,” said Ross. “ But he still has to accommodate last minute changes.
Usually, Ross states he is able to autonomously operate the site with preemptive scheduling while Ross goes on about his day . In the future, Ross plans to share this method of maintenance with his eventual successor, while helping the site even further by adding Principal Mark Carothers’ weekly message as a link on the site.
