Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Does anyone in the USA love their child's school?

I am just wrapping up a biannual trip back to visit family in the States, and after every visit I get sad about missing my family and think about moving back. I end up researching places, but in the end we always decide that we like where we live too much and don't move.

This time I have the added challenge of just having found a school that I think will be a really good fit for my son. He is not officially 2e, but he is HG with some challenging behaviours, and definitely has asynchronous development between his academics and his social emotional development.

I guess this is a good place for us all to vent our frustrations, so I sometimes get the impression that few people are happy with their schools. Does anyone out there have a child attending a school that they think caters well to their children?

ETA It took us a lot of research to find the new school that we think will work, and that was living in the city we were looking for schools in, so I guess we will probably decide against a move again, but I like to feel like I have options.

In general I am in like with my 5th grader's elementary school but not in love. If I were queen of the world I would fix the few things wrong with the school with a wave of my hand and then I would love it.

My high school son's school is adequate. I don't hate it. I could fix a few things there too. Like hire more elective teachers so those classes are not just warehousing kids for a period. The facilities are nice and he has decent teachers.

As far as gifted. The elementary did do a skip but beyond that he isn't getting much more to support his needs. He is getting into some bad habits.

The high school honors classes and AP are challenging enough for my 2e gifted high schooler. Wish he had more contact with his gifted coordinator. In fact, I wish the gifted coordinator offered a gifted elective (my son finds it hard to find electives he wants to take).

In order to have a school that caters to your child, you generally need to be relatively high in the school system, whether on the school board or be school superintendent, etc.

Alternately, you need to socially ingratiate yourself to these people.

Yes. Our middle school is pretty extraordinary-- not perfect, but great for my 2E.

After forcing a grade-skip despite their every attempt to stop me, I no longer hate DD9's school. Her daily G/T math and ELA pull-outs are meeting her cognitive needs, and those subjects are tending to also involve some science and social studies, too. The school is offering a surprisingly rich array of extracurriculars for a public elementary school, too.

But, still. Just yesterday I had a conversation with another parent of a G/T student in her school, in which he talked about how every year he has the same conversation with the school about his son's schedule, how the pull-outs often conflict with homeroom core subjects (science and social studies), and how he has to make himself a PITA in order to get things corrected, even going so far as requesting copies of the books for home. It all sounded painfully familiar.

The school also micromanages everything, though DD notes that the rules are often bent for the G/T kids. Only when she's in the pull-outs, though. For example, in those classrooms, she can have gum.

Then there's the 20-minute lunch (with teachers wasting so much time policing militaristic marching lines that some students get less than 5 minutes of seated-to-eat time every day), the zero-tolerance bullying policy that does not exist in practice (unless a parent makes himself a PITA), and nonsensical recess boundaries based on grade level (two grades may share the playground, but each has their own side, and woe to the child who crosses) and gender (DD reports that girls are shooed away from the basketball game by teachers).

DD's school experience has come a long way, but it has a much longer way yet to go.

We love our school. It's not perfect, but when I think about what I would change the only big thing would be a longer school year - just to have more more more of what they do there.

(We use a gifted private school)

We did last year (private, Catholic school). Very good classroom setup (two hours of primarily self-directed/small group work -- students had a list to work on but the order was their own), fun teacher, single-subject acceleration support. This year, not as much. Perhaps the glow has worn off, but this teacher just doesn't get it the same way the other one did. And that's just one more thing we have to deal with when parenting an already challenging child. We are tired. So, to be frank, we've not done much about it yet.

Home district for Kindergarten was not good at all. Blech!

Private school for 1st through 5th grade (grade skip from 1st to 3rd) was a fantastic place, but came with a $ cost.

Open enrolled to the neighboring district. They were on board with a grade skip into 7th. Plus, put her in the accelerated math program. Plus, put her in the G/T program. Plus, in 8th grade, allowed her to take three HS classes. Overall, the middle school may not have been perfect, but for a public school it certainly was better than average, and they were trying to make things work.

Continued into HS in the neighboring district. This HS is very much into pushing AP classes (in my opinion, perhaps too much). This might not be great for the average learner, but it works out well for our, now 10th grade, DD. She did have to fight a little bit to be allowed to take two foreign languages at the same time, but the school did relent. They are also accepting of taking classes through local colleges for HS credit, which may be good when her senior year rolls around.

Overall, after leaving our home school district, we've been pretty happy.

Best of luck,
--S.F.

Yes, we are in Detroit. I would not leave friends and family for the school but am super happy that the school is in our neighborhood. It is a stand alone TAG school.

Our experiences with our own children have been okay, but not ideal (now we homeschool).

I will say, though, that the private sectarian school I attended as a child has really taken the modifications my parents talked them into trying for each of us and run with them, to the point that they now have gifted enrichment pull-out 2-6, advanced tracks 7-8, and policies for modified programs, including accelerated courses, independent study, transfer credit from CTY-type or college courses, and partial enrollment for early college (though they won't issue a diploma if you drop below a certain number of core on-campus courses). They also allow students to "challenge" prerequisite courses (test into higher levels by passing the final exam of previous courses). Of course, being a private school, you do pay extra for anything that requires additional staffing.

I had a very good experience there (decades ago), firstly because it was generally a community of warm, dedicated educators who viewed this as a vocation, and secondly because they allowed my parents to assume the risk in adapting the curriculum to my needs. I would probably send my children there if it were not very, very far away. Though I would probably still end up using some alumnal and professional leverage to make further accommodations (especially in elementary).