I recently highlighted The School Boards as an up-and-coming website for New York parents. I had a chance yesterday to chat with the founder of The School Boards, Will Pan. I was deeply impressed by his integrity and persistence in setting up an exciting new site for families.
Will writes:
The whole idea of the site came about when I went online to do research for more information on schools but wasn’t able to find much beyond the school websites. Also, while I had friends at some of these schools, I wanted to be able to get feedback from a larger sample size of parents. As a result, I decided to create a supportive online community for parents going through the school process to ask questions, share information and connect with other parents that have been there done that.
In less than two years, the site has come quite a long way in generating conversations about preschools, public schools and private schools in the city. I’ve worked hard to keep the snark and misinformation off The School Boards so that the community stays supportive and informative. As the site is a community, it really depends on us parents to share, whether it’s a review about our children’s schools, advice on the application process or anything education-related. My goal is to make the site a wonderful resource for parents helping other parents in what can be a very stressful process.
While the site requires you to post with a username, you can actually make the username as anonymous as you want. That way, you won’t have to worry about your identity being revealed, which I know is a very big concern for some prospective parents.
I’m excited to be working more closely with The School Boards and contributing my advice from time to time. If you have a chance, take a look (better yet, share a review of your children’s school)!