Helpful sites for stressed out school shoppers

Here are a pair of websites that will be of interest to anyone in the midst of the SFUSD enrollment process.

The first is a wiki that enables parents to share their information, notes, impression, and opinions about individual schools. Want to know what another parent thought about their visit to Sherman ES? Leonard Flynn ES? Marina MS? Have an opinion you want to share about a school you've visited? Head on over and contribute. Trust me, the act of putting your thoughts into words and publishing them really helps one focus your thoughts. I highly recommend it.
San Francisco School Tours - Your Notes

This site came about as I was touring elementary schools in San Francisco. I noticed that everyone was taking notes, but I had not seen them consolidated anywhere. Also, it is unlikely someone will tour all the schools so this is a divide and conquer site. It has some useful features – You can edit information, add information subscribe to page updates which will get you updated tour notes etc.

The School Tours wiki includes many links to another parent's blog that chronicles her ongoing school search:
The K Files

The K Files is a blog written by a San Francisco mom who is seeking a kindergarten for her four-year-old daughter. The mom’s name is Kate; the daughter’s name is Alice. There’s also a dad, Ryan, and a son, Sam, who is three years old. (These are pseudonyms as are most of the names in this blog.)

The K Files serves as an outlet for Kate, who was becoming overly stressed about the school process. It tells the story of Kate’s search and offers up school reviews.

Years ago, when Caroline and I started the sfschools list, we were on the vanguard of using the web to share school information and organize on-line communities. It is really exciting to see the social networking and publishing technologies evolve, and see new generations of school parents adopt increasingly creative ways of leveraging the web to help themselves and help others.