There are two different ways of shortening the URL of items such as pages or news articles, one can be done in SchoolStatus Sites using vanity URL in the Redirect Manager and the second way is through the use of link shorteners. A link shortener takes a long URL and turns it into a shorter custom URL of your liking.
You can find hundreds if not more of link shorteners with a quick Google search, TinyURL and Bitly is the link shorteners of choice.