Your area sounds a lot like ours. It is a good school district with standardized test scores almost always in the top 1% of the state (same for the two adjoining districts). However, I have yet to meet a kid who was challenged in K. People complain about the lack of challenge in K. Next year, they are going to full day K, so maybe it will be better (though there were a number of not very well thought out issues with full day K).
Academics probably won't be challenging for a while. I know you don't want to hear that, but I think it would be very difficult to meet each kid where they are in math, reading, writing, science, music, etc. There is so much variation in the elementary kids. While things will likely never "even out", the differences are typically not so huge as they get a bit older that they can group/track to form more appropriate placement by HS.
As I read through here, I think that folks would say I was "damaged" by my elementary experience. I am not PG or anything close, but I was reading by age 4, chapter books by age 5. I went to a highly regarded private school, but I recall tracing letters a lot (I was writing stories of a few pages by then) and the most difficult math problem we did all year was 5+5 (because the answer was double digits - all the other addition problems resulted in single digit answers).
I think things have changed for the better now. The problem might be that if you live in a "good district" that there are a number of kids who are beyond K math. Some may be gifted, some may be hothoused, but if I saw one kid get accommodated, then I would want my special snowflake accommodated too. No matter that my kid isn't really all that bright, but I don't want my kid getting behind. As I noted on the MAP math thread, my kid probably messed up her future in math (right through senior year) this morning because I doubt she got 96th percentile (since she refuses to "learn ahead"). I will have to go to bat for my youngest snowflake because she refuses to be hothoused.
