I think that local Q&A is a great idea. It's nice to look at state standardized testing scores that provide a way to rank schools within a given area, but most often that doesn't tell the whole story. It's wonderful to have this website to interact (anonymously, if so desired) with other members of the community and get the inside scoop on various school districts.

I love it. I am new to this town and would love to meet other mother's in the same town. and find out about the schools in this area.

good night everyone... i will figure this out tomorrow lol

ty, am new to this page

Misscherylxo, there is no separate california city comment page. Are you looking for a information about a specific school in some California city? You can click on the green menu bar at the top of this page, where it says "Find a School" and enter a location and grade level, and see a list of all schools in a given area.

Hi am new on this page , hope this is california city page?

Joelysmom, can you be more specific? Are you looking at the "generic" questions that were pre-posted but might not have any answers (ie, "Share your experiences about a great middle school in Anytown, USA?") because if nobody else from that town is a member of Greatschools, or doesn't have a child of that age group, then there just might not be any answers yet. (Which is different from there being responses that you can't see, perhaps due to some software glitch.)

Absolutely love it! Exactly what we needed to get in touch with other parents from around the same area. I didn't find any difficulty using it.
Thanks loads.

I am having a hard time with this site. I see all of the questions, but none of the responses. This is why I'm here. Help!

The Local Q and A section was exactly what I was looking for when I joined the greatschools community! We are moving out of state this summer and really desire contact with other parents in the new area as we make a decision about a new school. This website has it ALL--one stop "school shopping" and discussion! I'm on your site all the time! Thank you so much for this wonderful resource.

We'll take a look at the bug. Thanks, vacekd1001.

Found a simple way to ask a "Local Q&A" just go to "Q&A" on he left hand side of he page. Scroll down to "Ask A Question" Ask your Local Q&A. Click submit. You will be asked if your question is local. Click the little state box. Put in your city and state. Post or submit your question.

HOWEVER when i answered my question it said Great Schools lost the content of my reply 2X in a row.

Someone from GS please help.

Hi I had a lot of trouble posting a Local Q&A. First I clicked on change city. Then I put in the city and state I wanted. Clicked Go.

The city Did Not change and I was taken to a list of questions others asked about the city. Then I clicked the back arrow on my computer and refreshed the page. Finally I had the city I wanted. Then I clicked ask a question about my city.

I was taken to a page with a lot of other information on it. I saw "Ask A Question" was not sure if this was where I should post local Q&A. However I posted my test question then I got a screen that said is this question local. It had the city and state I wanted. So finally I asked my question.

throli, Hi and Welcome to Great Schools

Unfortunately this is a nation wide sight so we would need to know the state and city you are moving to. Your e-mail address is private. Other members do not have that information unless you give it to them. Also it is against Great School rules to publicly post your e-mail address. So what you would have to do is ask people to send you a private message and there you may give out your e-mail address if you wish.

Read the above post on how I asked "Local Q&A"


Good Luck!!!!

bambina, this website is not connected to a particular school....It would be best to call your child's teacher and ask about it.

We did not attend a parent/teacher conference last month. I assumed the teacher would send home my daughter's progress report but she hasn't. Was the teacher suppose to send it that week? Or was I suppose to request it?

I think that you should break out Chicago into Chicago as in the city of Chicago and those parents raising children in the City. Chicago suburbs, even those close in like Oak Park and Evanston, Northwest Suburbs, etc. should have their own groups. Parents who are raising their children in or near downtown have completely different educational issues because we can't send our children to neighborhood schools. The competition for spots is harsh and that situation alone requires that the "City of Chicago" have it's own group. Thanks.

As a parent, athletic coach and academic coach I have a high degree of interest in local schools. We are blessed with so many good ones in Grand Rapids and it's nice to have a tool such as this one that makes it so easy to respond to queries from other metro dwellers or from parents outside the region. Keep up the great work!

awesome! Not sure if this is helpful but I did not have problem when I first joined, the slowness just seems to have been in the last week. Thank you

beachcomber and Cinderbell, thanks for mentioning the slowness. We've made a couple of improvements that are going live this week that will speed up the groups pages and the amount of time it takes for threads to load. I'll make sure our tech team takes a look at the slowness you're seeing when submitting comments.

thanks for the info :)

beachcomber-this site has always run slowly for me also, one reason I don't come here that often. It seems to take forever most times to open a link or submit a reply. I thought maybe it was my server but everything else runs fine, except this site.

So, it could be that this site just runs slow for some reason.

I think GS is doing a wonderful job, the only thing is lately it seems to be running a lot slower than usual. I do not know if it is because a lot of members are on at the same time or not but it seems to take a lot longer to submit or go from one group to another etc.

Could everyone in the GS community go to the research and compare section and rank the school(s) their child attends. Most of the schools i looked up only had three parents respond that made up the parent rating. Some did not have any.

I am fairly new to the GreatSchools Community and am still just finding my way around the website I had clicked on the questions that show when I log in for my area and even replied to a few but never realized that clicking on read more would give the list that it does. I think that is awesome. Then I can change the town for areas close to me as well and maybe answer some questions to help others.

Sorry to be doubtful, but I'd like to see the statistics...If your baseline was that one post every week was being answered by someone in an area, and now maybe a post a day is being answered, it still doesn't say much about the 20 or 30 posts per day that would be unanswered if people like me didn't respond....Some of the posts that people categorize as "local" really are more "generalized" and other people could try to answer.
I really feel that GS has made great efforts to increase "traffic" but needs to be doing a better job "directing traffic" once they're here.

I understand these concerns and would never want anyone to feel like their wasting their time. I also don't want GreatSchools to come across as a bad host(ess).
I've actually noticed that slowly but surely more and more local posts are getting answered by other people in an area. It's not a monumental number but it's worth noting.

I agree with healthy11, I do try to answer the local questions for Phoenix. Sadly, I can only answer so many and the rest of the questions are set adrift. I do, however, do not see much activity from other regular members in the local Q&A either. I find that a lot times people have posted in the local Q&A and even after I respond to their question they never return. I don't if it has to do with a lack of responses to their post or something else.

I think that Greatschools needs to do more to ensure that the increasing number of local posts receive some kind of answer, even if it's an "automated response" from a Greatschools employee that says, "This is a nationwide forum and you may not find another person from the same town with a child in the same school as yours. For general questions, we invite you to join some of our other groups, which can be found by clicking on the blue "Groups" menu along the left side of this page."

You've got a lot of people who are now posting "locally," but few "regular members" who take time to answer, and I think it's rude for Greatschools to encourage them to come here, but not to assign more employees to support the forum and provide responses.

I am having a "mailing problem, "just on great schools". I tryed to start a "NEW POST FOR THIS" and it would let me type the" Topic "but when i went to the box --"all goes "blank" it wont even let me type--this is also happening in my mail. This is not happening in my "yahoo" mail. It is just on this sight? Is anyone else having this problem?

Thanks for the information tjlove, that did clear things up for me. My hopes are really high for the local Q&A, so knowing that those questions are categorized in the right place makes me feel a lot better!

Sbozarth23,
We don't filter the local questions out of the general Q&A, which is why you're seeing them there. One way to tell if a question has been categorized as local is to check the "breadcrumbs."
At the top of the page, right underneath the blue toolbar, you'll see a little blue bar with the words, "You Are Here." If a question is categorized locally, it will show the city and state in the breadcrumbs.

Here's an example of a question categorized locally: community.greatschools.net/q-and-a/297451/Anyone-considering-in-enrolling-at-the-NEA-charter-in-Alameda-for-2009

In the breadcrumbs for this question you'll see: Community Home > Alameda, CA > Q&A...

Does that help?

I think children need to be happy of what the parents give to them. Some parents work hard to try to grt their kids what they wnt,but most of us are on a budget.I think kids who are selfish need to go to a childrens home and see what it is like for them and not to have hardly nothing.Some or most kids in children homes do not see or talk to their parents no more.

ME TOO....Laura

I'm not quite sure how to phrase this, but I'm curious as to how successful the local Q&A feature has been so far. I just went to see in the general questions area if there was anything I could answer, the entire first page was specific school questions. My fingers are getting stiff from the "Hi, welcome...have you seen the local Q&A feature because this is where your question belongs.."

So how's it going? :)

The concept is great, but there's no content for my locale (either that or I'm not understanding the UI & just can't _find_ the content). The Qs posted are exactly what I'm curious about, & I'd love to hear the As ... is there any way to seed the conversation? Any way to recruit folks from each area? (mine happens to be Campbell, CA, but this is a more general comment).

I think this is a great idea, since I will soon be in the Mahanoy area and I am learning so much of what goes on in the schools. Thank you for making this.

I love the fact that I can now talk to others who are local. Being able to discuss issues relevant to where I live makes much more sense because parents in my area are usually more in the know than parents elsewhere. That's not to say that other parents don't have great advice, its just that being able to talk to a 'neighbor' makes me feel better about discussing local issues.

I love the idea and think that it will help alot of your members. Alot of problems are not known about unless you have access to information from inside the school. You cannot believe all of the info though. It may just be a disgruntled parent making hateful and untrue statements. I read some comments on my school and disagree and agree with some of the statements. But I am glad that their is a way to get the word out there about your school. Also being able to talk with someone who is having the same problem that I am having helps alot. My saying is 2 minds are better than one!

I LOVE IT! I live in a rural county who has good schools but there is just too many politics in the Soddy Daisy, TN schools for me. I volunteer alot and do alot of work at my school. I give them like 20-35 hours a week of my time plus more at special activities. I like being able to give my comments w/o revealing my name so that no one can hold my opinions/suggestions or begrudgingly be mean to me or my child. That does happen in some schools and by some of the parents who are very opinionated and inmature!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Havent logged on for a while so to find an area local to me is great. I love being able to help others that are moving into LB with their questions. Hopefully if I have a question to post someday I will get a response also.

Yea, i do feel bad, because some people have wrote in from this area...and i have put out a "friend blast".. with no response???

Don't feel bad, laura1967. Los Angeles is a HUGE area, with millions of people, and it's still a challenge find enough locals to discuss school issues here.

I love it., but there seems to be NO-ONE, in HENDERSOVILLE,N.C...interested in my location???

Great feedback, sbozarth23. We've really only started to scratch the surface in terms of promoting local questions so that parents in a particular city can read and respond to them. There's so much more we can do--and WILL do--to advertise these posts.

Here's what we have done so far:

- As you cruise through community posts, you'll see a list of "Local Q&A" for your city in the top right corner on some pages. We haven't put this list on all of our community pages yet, but is something we will be doing soon.

- We put lists of local Q&A on our browse schools pages. For example:

www.greatschools.net/virginia/virginia-beach/schools/

and

www.greatschools.net/schools.page?district=174&state=or

These pages are seen by parents who are researching schools on GreatSchools.net.

- We've also just started to add links to local questions in one of our most popular newsletters, our "My School Stats" newsletter.

We're taking baby steps because we want to make sure we're presenting the right local stuff to meet the needs of the parents who have these questions. We're using the feedback in this thread and feedback from other people who are interacting with the questions to make better choices about how and where to promote the questions, so you'll probably see some changes to the way we're doing things over the next couple of months. And you'll also (hopefully!) see more activity as we start promoting Local Q&A elsewhere.

I am hoping in my Local Q&A that more people will start posting and answering from AZ soon. I see more GS posts than local Arizonans so far which is disappointing. I get the sense it's not being advertised (not to step on toes) effectively. I cannot remember seeing anything about it beyond an email. I was hoping for a bigger announcement or to see it displayed in a more noticeable way. Plus on the down side of the local section some people may have hard time posting without giving more personal info than they may feel comfortable with like the school thier child is or has attended.

I guess I may be a little bummed that it has not been picked up by the majority of members so far. Plus I still think a lot of people are in the dark because I still see a lot of questions in the general questions are that area still about specific towns or schools.

Food for thought.

It might be just "growing pains" but some of the "stock" questions are just odd. Living in the second largest district in the nation, to see various areas being asked "what districts are good..." is silly because there is only one district for a gazillion miles. And the answers are going to be less than complimentary. If they're stock questions, perhaps with a little manpower, they can be deleted or tinkered with to not sound so mechanical.

And when I click for more "local" questions, I'm seeing questions for areas over an hour in any direction (and some closer to two hours' drive). If that's going to be the standard, then perhaps instead of "little town" questions, they could be reworded to "Southern California" questions which at least seems closer to the truth.

I think the new addition of the local Q&A is terrific. I would really like to hear more from the discussion group that is in my local area. It seems more 'close to home', which it is, and maybe someone I know will be able to relate to the discussions we have on this site. I have talked with a lot of parents from my local area and told them about this site, hoping they will join in and get some great use from the group discussions we have. I hope we cover enough subjects that parents and teachers would like to have feedback and ideas on. If not, we'll come up with some more, won't we? I enjoy sharing and listening here, I hope others will as well. Helpful Grandma

thank you TJ, i decided againist a group. If i have a important question,i do--just e-mail, who i respect most on the subject.

Hi Laura1967,

You can start a private group for yourself and these other members to talk about more private and personal matters. You can also use the private messaging system to carry on personal and private conversations.

TJ,

Goodness, I know these questions about cities are generic, but thanks for explaining;)

Cinderbell

tjlove, i know this may sound bad- but i am sorry,---i have found ladies/people on this WEB-SIGHT, who, i value" just their opion," and they really don't want private question's....i wish their was just a sight/group for like the most valued /oldest/respected people and not just open to anyone. I much rather have their opion then just anyone's......

Cinderbell: There are some generic questions that we have filtered into all cities, so that's probably what you're seeing; especially if it was posted by a GS staff.

I saw these "local" questions and laughed. It asked to give feedback on local private schools in my town.

The last private school in this town closed at least 4 years ago.

I think it is great also, i just wish there was someone in ,HENDERSONVILLE, N.C....I do have another question---why does the trash -- not empty????, in the e-mail???

I saw that local option today and I for one was really impressed with this new feature. I think it will clear up a lot of space in the general questions area for people looking for answers about specific towns.

Thanks for the great work!