Looking for a new tool for recruiting teachers to the Helena School District, officials turned to one Helena High grad and two seniors at the school to put the product together.

The result is www.teachhelena.

com, a Web site designed to put the best foot of the school district and the community forward.

“What we were looking for is a way to articulate what a great place Helena is as a recruitment tool,” said Barb Ridgway, the school district’s technology information services administrator. “We wanted to have something to show prospective teaching candidates what was available.”

The contract for the site went to Steffen Rasile, 22, who recently graduated from Columbia College in Chicago with a degree in interactive art and media, then returned home to Helena to open a freelance Web-design business, SRA Design Studios.

Rasile enlisted the help of a pair of Helena High seniors, Tyler Anfinson and Chris Cordingley, who needed the practical vocational experience credit to finish their Bengal Business class and graduate.

Rasile said that in addition to designing an efficient, attractive site, he worked to ensure it would turn up near the top of search-engine lists when people used the right keywords.

“We’re trying to use some of the new technologies that are out there to drive traffic to the site,” he said. “We’re getting hits from all over the country, and there are international hits as well. I don’t know if (the district) is getting applications, but I know it’s being viewed.”

One tool to increase the site’s profile is the inclusion of a handful of videos of young local teachers and administrators, each uploaded to YouTube and hosted at teachhelena.com.

The students said they gained a new appreciation for the technical nature of the code used to design Web pages.

“It’s pretty tedious,” Cordingley said. “There are so many different parts of the Web site that when you look at them, you don’t realize what went into them.”

“And different code will look completely different in different browsers,” Anfinson added.

The site was done in time this spring for school officials to showcase it at recruiting fairs across the region. Ridgway said the district had a presence at fairs around Montana, as well as in Spokane, Wash., and Colorado.

“We’re finding that as it gets more and more competitive, we have to do better and better,” Ridgway said.

She wasn’t aware of whether any teachers had been drawn to apply for jobs here through the site, but said that just being able to give out a Web address rather than a stack of papers at a job fair made the site a winner.

Business teacher Lisa Parker said the students learned a great deal from designing the Web page.

“I would rather see them do something that’s real-life and see that whatever they do is published,” she said. “If they’re doing something that’s relevant, they get into it more.”

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.