Hi,

My son in now in 7th grade but we went through something very similar in K. One thing we were able to do was get a formal IDEP for gifted differentiation, even though the gifted programs in our district did not begin until 4th grade. I simply looked up all the state and district laws (found this avenue to pursue) and made a visit to the elementary school's gifted coordinator. What this ended up looking like: going to another K class for a higher reading group, independent reading practice in the library before school (I had to take him & I'm sorry, I can't remember the system, but basically, he was assigned books that were near his level and then had to answer questions about them on the computer in the school library), and getting a pull-out once a week for a enrichment activities. He also had access to a computer math program, but she hardly ever let him do it (it wasn't fair to anyone else).

We first tried asking the teacher to differentiate for him politely. That was a big failure. She passive-aggressively dumped a bunch of college texts on the poor child's desk and started sending home HUGE numbers of coloring worksheets (he hated coloring). She also demanded that he still participate in all the phonics lessons and alphabet lessons, even though he was reading at a 5th grade level (by their own tests). She was quite nasty, yelling at him in front of the class about how terrible he was because he always refused to do the play centers. He had no friends and cried daily. He even once yelled at her that he was "Smarter than her and one day she'd see that." (He was beyond frustrated).

After the meeting with the GC, things improved for a short while (he especially LOVED going to the other K class where the teacher was quite sympathetic). But then his K teacher started finding excuses (lots of them) to not follow his IDEP (which she was legally bound to do). So meetings. Many meetings. At one she told me "mother to mother, we need to bring him down to the level of his peers because if we don't where will he be when he gets to 5th grade?" (If I knew where she is, I'd answer her now: Seventh grade, and happy.)

Anyway, we attempted to take this up the food chain, but the principal gave us the run-around. Very unprofessional. The GC even walked me to the office one day and the principal refused to talk to me or even schedule a meeting (just too busy, sorry). All the while, we had been looking for other options (we had formally requested being put full-time into the sympathetic K teacher's class: denied) and we had been looking at every other school we could think of. Something else came up, and we bolted. A week after we did, we found that we had been assigned for the next year the WORST 1st grade teacher for a gifted student at the school. The one the GC told us we should not have under any circumstance, because she had her hands full with the ESL students.

Now... fast forward to 7th. My son is 2 years grade skipped. He loves school (and MS, very rare). The school we bolted to has worked with us to find solutions when there have been glitches (and there have, he's not easy).

Anyway, if the nice way doesn't work, you can always look into legal options (like whether his testing qualifies him for some kind of differentiation according to district rules). If that doesn't work, keep taking it up the food chain as you have to, and/or look for other options. Every child deserves to learn something in school and every child deserves to be valued.

And it will get better. The older they get, the more options there are.

good luck!!!