Case study
Freie Evangelische Schule Kirchheim
A website engagement that grew into infrastructure, then into a product pilot
The starting point
A good school behind a slow website.
The Freie Evangelische Schule Kirchheim is a strong school that looked weak online. Its legacy platform cost too much, loaded too slowly, and hid content edits behind an admin interface the staff dreaded. The worst of it was a five-second cold start: parents arrived, waited, and left.
The brief
The results
Measured, not estimated.
0s
Cold boot time
Down from 5 seconds
100
Lighthouse score
SEO and best practices
3x
Time to interactive
Faster than the legacy site
+300%
Search impressions
Year over year
2.5x
Click-through rate
In search results
-60%
Infrastructure cost
Per year
The build
Boring architecture, chosen deliberately.
The site moved to Next.js with server rendering and incremental static regeneration, which removed the cold start entirely. The registration for new students became a short guided form that validates as parents type.
Strict typing
TypeScript in strict mode, so mistakes surface at compile time instead of in a parent's browser.
Accessible by default
Semantic HTML and tested accessibility, because a school website serves grandparents on old tablets as much as students on new phones.
Run by the school office
Staff update content and events themselves. No developer is needed for the daily work.
The second chapter: infrastructure
The school now owns its platform, declaratively.
The engagement did not stop at the website. FESK’s services now run on declarative infrastructure: the host is described in code, changes arrive as reviewed pull requests, and the running system is converged to match what the repository says. Nothing on the server is hand-configured.
The third chapter: Atrium
From client to pilot school.
Working inside the school’s daily operations showed how much of the school day still ran on paper and patience. That observation became Atrium, a platform for the operative day of a school, and FESK became its first pilot. What began as a website now covers the school’s public face, its infrastructure, and the pilot of its operations platform.
The new platform didn’t just save us money; it gave us a voice that is finally heard clearly online.
See it live
The website is in daily use by the school community.