Hello All!
So glad I found this board, I've been poring over it for the last two hours! I thought I'd say hello and give you a little about me and mine.
I live in New Hampshire, in a very small town with my husband and two children. DD is 6, just wrapping up K this week, and DS is 4 and just wrapping up his first year of full-time (8-3, 5 days) preschool.
Early this year, I initiated a request to the Superintendent to consider waiving the Kindergarten entrance date for DS. Very long, very drawn out story--where the Supt. claimed to have consulted "several District Professionals" (he only consulted one, and I called him out on it
) who felt DS's socio-emotional needs would be best served by attending K at the age-appropriate time, despite my assertions that starting K would in fact benefit him in that respect.
We took it to the school board, who invited us to meet with them in closed session, asked us what we wanted. What we wanted was at the very least for them to consider including him the K screening to see if, in fact, he was out of place socially/emotionally with the general population of incoming Kindergarteners, and at the most, to just waive the date (yeah, it was a pipe dream!).
We just received correspondence from the board. DS will NOT be attending K this year. "Fiscal constraints", they explained (I wish they'd told me that back in February when I first made the request...) Oh, and there was that cute line about "while based on his K-Seals scores and other evaluations, we believe that DS would clearly benefit from entering Kindergarten, so would many other children." This one really irked me. Quite frankly, I'm not interested in other children. I'm interested in
my boy, and what is best for
him.
Now, they've assured me they will welcome him in 2009, and will work with me in seeing to it that DS will be offered the resources necessary to ensure that he is challenged to "meet or exceed his full potential".
***
Hmm, if we're talking about his full potential, you can't truly
exceed it. In
exceeding it, haven't you actually
expanded the parameters of what 'Full Potential' is for a given individual, thusly setting a new definition of one's 'full potential'? ***
Sadly, the services they've offered my DD to date have been miniscule, and clearly not doing a whole lot for her, except to break up the day a bit each Thursday. And, I'm certainly not anticipating an excessive bump to the GT budget over the next couple of years.
Financially, we're at the mercy of the schools. Private school won't fit the budget, but we don't qualify for financial aid. Homeschooling is not an option for me, despite a degree in education. So, I'll keep doing what I've been doing: Offering my kids supplemental experiences to help them to excercise their minds. I'm not sure what other options I have at this point, anyway.
So, that's my story. I look forward to getting to know y'all, and learning from your experiences!
