Our son is attending kindergarten in a small neighborhood school that struggles to meet accountability targets. However, we live in a university town, so resources for the gifted are plentiful and other schools in the district are much more typical high achieving suburban schools.
Our school has been wonderful about designing a program that comes pretty close to meeting our son's needs. He goes to first grade for language arts daily, and goes twice a week to a first grade gifted pullout that rotates between science and social studies. He also works with the gifted specialist for math instruction once a week, and gets specialized assignments the other four days that the assistant supervises in the classroom.
According to friends of ours who teach at other elementary schools in the district, this level of accommodation would never be allowed at their school. There is a policy that no child gets identified as gifted until first grade, and that subject acceleration doesn't happen ever.
So, my personal advice from my personal experience is to ask the school how they can work with your kid, don't necessarily go in with an expectation that they will do a specific thing for him or her, but don't back down if they are saying there is nothing to be done. The program they have devised for our son does not meet his needs perfectly, but it is good enough for him right now. No professional wants you to come in and tell them how to do their job, but most professionals do want you to provide them with the data and background information necessary to do their job well.
