I'm brand new to this site so please bare with me if this question is in the wrong place. We have a 6 yr old son (we'll call him LD) who is in 1st grade. We placed him in kindergarten early (missed the cut off by 4 whole days) because of his intelligence and height we felt he'd socially fit in well with kids a little older. His teacher never spoke with any parents of the 22 kids in her class unless we begged. In November we discovered LD was doing work he did when he was 3. He was bored stiff. We asked the teacher for months to challenge him more, allow us to volunteer during school so he could be challenged, anything. Nothing happened. By March and several meetings later I went to the principal. She was awful. She told me twice that I just had a smart kid, there's nothing they can do and I should find extra-curricular activities for LD to challenge him. She added that she choose that path for her daughter who was graduating in 2006. I quote, "Sure she was bored in school for 12 years, but she had 4-H." I haven't beaten my head against a wall enough to accept that as an option. Our family loves a first grade teacher so we managed to get him into her class for this year. She is fantastic and the class size is only 16 this year, but LD is still bored. We live in Massachusetts and they have the MCAS requirements that hogtie teachers into teaching to the bottom of the class. As great a teacher as LD has, all her time is spent on teaching the more than half the class that are still trying to sound out 2 and 3 letter words (I volunteer once a week now and can't help my son because they only see the remidial kids as needing help) They were excited to tell us that they raised his computer literacy level to include hard words like muffin and pancake. At home he's struggling but succeeding sounding out encyclopedia. He breezes through anything I've written here. His math skills are similar.
I've gone to 3 private schools and talked with parents of 2 other private school and parents in the 5 surrounding districts. This seems to be the norm. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do stay home so homeschooling is an option BUT what about his social skills???? We know LD is smart, we don't know if he is "gifted" How do we find out and what difference does it make? How do people work with districts like this? Incidentally, my husband recently became chairman of the district school board. Is there anything he can do (keep it legal and ethical please)?
