Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School WWYD - boarding high school?

I starting to agonize over next year's schooling decisions for DS10. He is currently homeschooled. I'm looking at needing him to be in high school or community college within 2 years, at least for math instruction.

There is a boarding high school about 45 minute drive away. It's primarily college prep for international students, and advertises getting an AA degree in high school utilizing the community college. Tuition is normally $40K range but a recent newspaper ad says they're waiving tuition for state residents.

I contacted the school and they are not automatically excluding my son based on age and invited me to schedule an interview/tour.

Bonuses: they have Mandarin Chinese by native speaker, Rube Goldberg club (my son would love that! He shadowed the Rube club last semester at the community college), music instruction.

He might thrive. Or the executive function requirement might sink him. I don't know what to think.

What would be on your mind? What kind of accomodations would you ask for? What questions would you have for the administrators?

Would he board there or just go for the days?

I wouldn't send my son to a boarding school where he was several years younger. If he is attending as a day student it seems (to me who lives in NZ) a long commute.

Here's a brief roundup on choosing a school.
- The Davidson database has information on choosing a school, including Choosing the right school for your gifted child (contains "must-ask questions and the answers that you should seek")
- Dr. Donald Treffinger's list found online at the website of Center for Creative Learning (CCL), and called “Dear School People”.

Will your child be grade-skipped 2 years and accelerated in math 4-6 years, when beginning this potential high school placement next year or the year after? As your child is currently homeschooled, you most likely did not go through a formal process prior to accelerating. However, prior to contemplating placing him in a brick-and-mortar school several grades accelerated, you may wish to review the Iowa Acceleration Scale, to ensure that you have given thought to a wide variety of academic, intellectual, and interpersonal factors which are important for classroom success after acceleration.

You might want to ask the school the number of other students they've enrolled with multiple full-grade accelerations... as well as the number of students for whom they've made advanced curriculum available. Essentially you would like to verify whether your son is likely to have a cohort of academic/intellectual peers? Chronological-age peers? If he would be boarding, you may also wish to ask about dorm rules, roommate assignment, processes/procedures for roommate incompatibility, etc.

Let's see, trying to address the questions.

I am not sure if I'm willing to commute for day school setting. I would consider that for a semester to see if he adjusts to the setting. We're in a rural area, nearing town is 20 minutes, so around here 45 minutes isn't a terrible commute.

He can be super independent, however he's not reliably responsible while being independent. He can hold his own better at community college campus than in elementary. He has no age peer friends. He had friendly acquaintances at the communicty college - a senior alternative student, a 16 year old dual enrolled high school students, and a couple of my classmates. He would chat up the professors and find people to play chess with. (Note that he was supposed to be doing his online schoolwork.....)

He was formally accelerated 3 grades by the school district at the beginning of 2016-2017 school year, so he could access a loophole that would allow him to take high school classes for credit. The virtual school network classes were disappointing, less rigorous than his middle school level textbooks.

I know the school caters to accelertation with dual-enrollment and that the majority of students are international. The school has strict classroom, hallway, transportation and dorm rules, including no PDA. I am perceiving it to be a socially safer situation than the local public high school

Thank you for suggesting additional questions!

My options include:

Homeschool with the help of tutors. Tutors are 45 mile commute and cost as much as a 3-credit community college course -- not including the cost of commuting!

Homeschool and start easing him into community college. That's 20 mile commute and if his first classes are conditional on my attendance, then add the cost of daycare.

Local public high school. This would start him accruing high school credits and, by my calculation, he would end up in community college in 2 - 3 years and this move would force high school graduation by age 14 unless I can talk them into accommodating his slow processing speed with fewer classes / more study hall.

I will have him take the community college math placement test this summer. I should schedule a meeting with the middle/high school principal again.

Where I live in Asia, the nearest middle school is over an hour's drive away, so the kids over 12 (some as young as 11) attend a boarding school during the week. There have been a few who have done the commute daily, but it's taxing. Some kids adjust well to boarding school; some have serious homesickness.

At what age does this boarding school allow (non-accelerated) boarders? If there will also be 11/12 year-old boarders, even if your son would be in a different year group, it may be a better fit. If boarding doesn't start until 13/14, and your son is 10/11, that's a big gap, particularly since boarding involves lots of afterschool activities (like sports) that may be challenging with such a big gap.

The school has specific criteria for adding homeschool classes to the transcript with an S grade. I wonder if he can do Phys Ed as homeschooled in the summer and document to their requirements.

If I pursue public school, I'd probably wait until 2018-2019 school year "6th grade" to put him in Phys Ed with age mates. Although if they won't put him in 7th grade and let him take 6th grade Phys Ed, then I'd have to wait until 7th grade since in my state, 6th graders cannot accrue high school credit and he'd have to retake high school classes again for credit. However, I would have to put him into community college for math before then. If he progresses linearly in math, he'd be in Calculus by then. Once he gets to community college he definitely won't tolerate going to public high school...

What does ds think?

puffin - great thoughts, as usual; Important to know what the student wants.

sanne - PM'ing you