Suggestions for implementing Drupal across a large school district...

All,
I work for a boutique Drupal shop based in Atlanta called Mediacurrent (www.mediacurrent.com).

I was hoping to get input on best practices and approaches from members of this group, or those with the unique combination of public education and Drupal experience for a major RFP that I am responding to. The long story short is a major school district that has 99 schools (50,000 students in the district) under their autonomy will all need originally designed websites, and we are trying to evangelize Drupal as the best solution for their content management needs. There are other networking, hardware, security, hosting, etc. components that are part of the bid as well, so we would be just one piece of the puzzle.

I would ideally like to get input on those who have experience implementing Drupal across a large school district.

I’ve reached out to Bill Fitzgerald and a few others, but wanted to start a thread as well since this is such a large proposal. I’ve cut and past the section of the proposal that primarily relate to the CMS needs. Again, if you read any part of this and have suggestions I am all ears.
If you would like to co-bid (and have the time over the next two weeks) with us then I am very receptive to that as well.

Here is the major dilemma – we are up against some very time sensitive deadlines (the RFP is due by April 16th), so timing is of the essence.

Thanks in advance for any help, Dave (dave dot terry at mediacurrent dot com)

4.0 Website Application: Required Features
4.1 The website application should include a user-friendly interface for managing the content of each school website, including adding additional pages, updating text, images, video, and other media files, and uploading downloadable forms, documents, etc. The user interface should resemble common web interfaces that are familiar to novice web users. Managing school websites should not require any knowledge of hyper-text mark-up language, JavaScript, java, sql, php and/or any other internet programming/scripting languages.
The website application should automatically scale uploaded images to fit in the designated space on the web page, while preserving optimal dpi resolution of the image.

4.2 The website application should have a sophisticated user management component that allows administrators to manage access to each schools’ site, for editing purposes. In addition, the designated website administrator should have the ability to assign roles to multiple web editors, so that web editors can only make updates to a specifically assigned area of the school website (Example: Both the student government sponsor and the athletics director may have editing capability of the schools’ website. However, the student government sponsor can only edit the student government section of the schools’ website, while the athletic director can only edit the sports section of the schools’ website).

4.3 The web application should have the ability to generate a report that tabulates automatically the number of website visitors per day and the number of hits (including unique hits) per day for each of the individual website components, for each individual school, in a format that is both web browser and print friendly.

4.4 The website application should include the ability to e-mail school staff members (without exposing email addresses to bulk mail or spam vendors) and incorporate an automated email response/routing application. The application should also include a feature that allows web editors to create forms and surveys whereby the contents and/or results are stored in a database and emailed to the appropriate designee.

4.5 The website application should be able integrate with the existing website and have the ability for publishing important announcements to each school website, simultaneously. The feature should also allow central office administrators the ability to add, edit, and/or delete content on each schools’ website. The application should also include a content approval component, so that published school website updates are held until approved by the appropriate designated school administrator, providing editorial control to the appropriate designee.

4.6 The website application should include a calendar feature that allows web editors to add, modify and delete events that are published to a web browser friendly format, with updates occurring dynamically, in real time.

4.7 The website application should include a component that allows the development and publishing of teacher websites whereby teachers can publish e-portfolios, syllabi, and other relevant class information.