Is there a gifted coordinator for the district? That is how it is supposed to work here, although I found her top priority seemed to be the kids in the school which she was working out of (the school with the magnet), but she was supposed to be working with all schools. In kindergarten it was a different person (than last year) and at the very beginning of the year I emailed her and described the situation with DS. She actually emailed back (gasp--i have had major problems with getting people in the district to respond to emails), and told me she would meet with his teacher. She gave the K teacher books and ideas of things to do. It was no official plan, and I don't really think it made a huge difference, but at least I felt like I had someone who was working for us/DS. Our district has now completely gotten rid of this position, which is really too bad.
It is the same here with NO differentiation for math. You do the district curriculum at the same pace as everyone else no matter what level you are. DD was in the "cluster" last year which meant she was given "enrichment packets" for math, but it did not involve any advanced calculations or moving ahead in the curriclum, it was basically logic word problems. She was still stuck doing the regular math curriculum. This will (supposedly) change next year in the magnet, but I feel for kids who are still not old enough (like DS) and those who are, but did not make their strict cut-offs and are stuck in the regular classrooms. DS's new second grade teacher told me that she ability groups for math and I was surprised, because I had never heard of anyone in this district doing that before. She said she is giving the advanced group enrichment stuff that is a couple grade levels ahead. Hopefully whatever she is doing it is better than what DD's teacher was doing last year with the cluster, which really didn't amount to much. There is acutally a "name" to what she is giving them, but I can't recall it at the moment. We pretty much decided it would probably still be inadequate for DS. I'm not sure how she is going to do an individualized plan for him...she may attempt to do what his teacher was doing last year, even though it was difficult. One thing I suggested was Khan Academy in addition to other work she comes up with based on above-level testing.
