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My daughter is 4 and will be entering Kindergarten in the fall. She currently attends a Montessori school, which she will probably stay at until 1st grade (our local school district is only half day K).

I am not keen on putting her in our public school district for 1st grade. Since none of the schools in our district have made AYP, I thought I could transfer her to a different district. I contacted the Superintendent's office, and they told me none of the neighboring districts would accept students from our district, plus most of the schools there have not made AYP either (I realize that doesn't necessarily matter for GT programs).

I've seen comments from other people on this forum that say they've put their children in a different public district that has a better GT program, but I am curious as to how that was done. Is there a way to get her into a different public school without moving? Are my only options our public district, or private school (I work, so homeschooling isn't an option)? Thank you for any assistance you can offer!

Well, you've already tried the front-door method of simply asking after doing your homework and looking at the obvious means.

In light of that, I'd say-- do more focused research into WHAT your options are locally, now that you know that you're not likely to get much help from the power-that-be in doing that investigation.

As a first step, find out if individual schools have GT titles anywhere in their info-- and make phone calls more directly to people in administration at individual schools.
It might well be that neighboring districts don't want students who are the reason why your district isn't making AYP, if you see my point. A GT student who is VERY likely to boost pass rates might be another story entirely and be worthy of an 'exception' to such a policy.

You won't be told that by district officials, no doubt, and you won't be told it at all officially, that is my guess... so ask about "exceptions" for extraordinary circumstances, etc. You may have to give people some space to go outside the lines a little. See what happens.

Mostly, look at the individual school level-- find out what you can and then make phone calls to get additional information about programs, etc. at individual schools. Have a short list of questions that matter most to you.



Then you'll know WHAT, and at that point, you can begin finding out what it will take to access any one of those options.

You need to investigate how this works in your area. I never understood how people on this forum got their kid into a neighboring district - it must work in a different way where they live. In fact, districts near here investigate and find kids who are sneaking into the schools by renting a small apartment with 10 other families and saying the kids all live there. These kids get kicked out of the district.

I know that our school district will take an out-of-district student - if they pay the tuition of $17K/yr. Of course, this may be better than the alternative of paying $25-30K/yr for private school. Hopefully you have better options than this.

I know this isn't an answer to your question, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss your local school without investigating further.

In our experience there are many reasons why a school might not be meeting AYP. In our district it is largly a result of having a lot of students who are new immigrants to the country and haven't yet had the time to learn the language and do well on the tests. Anyway, whatever the reason, sometimes the discrepancy between where your child is and where the average child in your school is makes more stark the reason for a different and individualized curriculum for your child.

In other words, in some schools with great credentials or a high population of gifted children, the school will take the approach that they routinely meet the needs of all their gifted students and so they do not need to do anything different for your child. Even gifted schools will do that. Of course, whether those schools will meet the needs of *your* child depends on a lot of factors. At a school with a wider range of abilities among children, sometimes the administration and/or teachers will recognize the need to meet a higher performing child at his or her level, where ever that is. Not to mention that they might be willing to do what it takes to keep your high-performing child in their school, if only to help raise the school's scores.

We have had success in our district not only with individualized lesson plans for our children but also with the school having multiple-level teaching in math, reading, and spelling at all grade levels.

Not saying that the public school will work for you, but just wanted to throw out there that you might want to ask them what they could do for a child like yours.

In our area, the only way to get into another public school district is via illegal/unethical means. Every so often we have seen mentions in the media regarding parents sneaking kids into our district. Usually they either "borrow" an address or somehow get hold of a fake lease. That isn't so easy since to register you would need to present a copy of your deed/mortgage/lease and two meaningful pieces of mail. Yet, somehow it happens more often than you would expect. Two years ago, there was even a concerted effort over months to uncover such students in our specific school due to overcrowding. I believe they remove a couple of dozen kids. Some parents have a better chance of getting away with it if they use a close family member's address and pretend they are the guardian for their child (i.e., uncle/aunt's address). There were instances where the district may choose to recover tuition from these parents, which amount to private tuition at non-religious schools.

Come to think of it, our district is also very stingy about allowing transfers among schools within our district. There is a bit of paperwork even for my kids who were accepted into magnet schools. They will officially be transfer students next year since the magnet school is not their geographic "home" school although still within the same district.

It comes down to money. Our tax-payers don't want to pay to educate students outside the tax base. Simce test scores are already high, there is no leverage in one more high performing student.

I am somewhat surprised that all the schools in your district plus most of the schools in the neighboring districts have not made AYP. It may be worth it to research a bit deeper to discover why and then isolate schools that you may want to actually visit. I have always visited and spoke to the principals before registering my kids at any school.

Since the public schools in your area are subpar, there may be a higher chance of decent private schools as a result. You should talk to your neighbors and colleague for leads to investigate.

Hah! Sneaking into our public school district would be like sneaking into North Korea!

Some states have open enrollment. In my state you can apply to another district and if the district has space, they accept kids from other districts. For highly coveted districts, there is usually a lottery system. School districts actually make money from taking open enrollment students, because they get money from the state for those students but they don't usually spend that amount of money on that particular student. The building has space, or a particular grade has space, so they don't need to hire new teachers or build new buildings. Plus, they don't need to provide bussing/transportation for those students so they save on those costs. Some districts try to recruit open enrollment students. We also can open enroll into different schools within our own district as long as there is space.
So I currently have one kid in one school and the other kid in another. I've had problems getting DD in anywhere. Third grade is packed in just about every building for some reason. Must have been a baby boom year.

This depends entirely on State and School District. Our State allows transfers to other districts if there is space. But there is no insentive. But our local school district does NOT. The only exception is if a parents works for the school district, and even that they are accepting very few students. This is because this is a rapidly growing city with one of the "best" ranked schools in the area. The schools we have can't keep up to the population we have and our schools are over enrolled. (We are building schools.) The situation is bad enough we have to prove we still live in the city every year, because there are always some to try to cheat the system.

So if you were trying to "transfer" into our district you would be out of luck. It's even getting difficult if you want your child to go to anything but your neighborhood school. The only exception is a few specific alternative schools, the 4-6 gifted program, and if a kid is in special-ed.

It's my understanding that in my area most of the high-scoring districts are not making, or at risk of not making, AYP. In California the percent proficient counts toward AYP; an advanced student who threatens to take away instructional attention from a classmate teetering on the basic/proficient boundary is a net lose in terms of AYP. It may well be that your district is low-performing, but AYP here isn't really a measure of that.

Consider this example: 75% Advanced, 15% Proficient, 10% Basic or Below, with a couple of percentage points of wobble between ethnic or income groups and between language arts and math. As soon as one group hits 12% Basic/Below in one subject, the district fails AYP - but the parents of the 75% of students who are not at all served by instruction at the Basic/Proficient boundary get upset by redirecting all the classroom attention there. It is a very difficult line for the school to walk.

All of the districts are terrified of legislation requiring them to accept out-of-district students 'if there is space' and are scrambling to prove there is no space.

I hope that you either find your AYPs to be meaningless, or your districts to be more flexible.