Hi everyone!
I'm really glad to have found this forum! My DH and I are beating our heads against the wall trying to figure out how to advocate for our DS...maybe you guys will have some insight. We have a very bright 5-year-old Kindergarten-aged son who started reading at 18 months, adding numbers in his head at 2 years (we've never seen him use his fingers for counting) and as I type he's reading his 5th grade brother's math textbook for fun. He understands it completely and has no problem completing the coursework. He's currently reading the Harry Potter books and loving them. But I digress...

He started in preschool at age 3 and enjoyed the first year a lot although he learned very little academically. The next year he was too young to start kindergarten so we put him back in the same preschool class. He felt betrayed that he was repeating the same thing over again and acted out regularly. We compensated by teaching him lots of new stuff at home and told him to just enjoy the social part of school; the rest of the year went reasonably well since his teacher really loved him worked with him one-on-one as time permitted.

We had him tested to see if he could attend our district's magnet school for GT kids and he was accepted. We were so relieved and hopeful that maybe this year his needs would finally be met. Not so much. There are 30 kids in his class and he's so bored he's getting in trouble daily for not paying attention and doing his own thing. He actually asked his teacher a couple of days ago for more challenging math work and she told him that she can't change the math curriculum just for him. She was very patronizing when she told me about his request but I made it very clear that she most definitely does need to make sure he's challenged. She did end up giving him some simple addition problems to work on, but right now at home he's obsessed with square roots and beginning on some basic algebra. He's getting very frustrated and sad that his teacher won't listen to him and won't call on him when he raises his hand to answer questions.

He's very normal socially and developmentally...he gets along well with kids his own age and older kids, too. He's not especially mature for his age but not immature either. I don't know if grade skipping would be a good option or not, but I do know our district really dislikes the idea in general.

Any ideas of how we can help him??