Thanks guys for all the posts - I really appreciate your input - we have been looking for months and months locally and I just happened to stumble on this Montessori school - we have the option to go with a more rigid, top of the line, state of the Art Montessori school that is local and goes from pre-k to middle school(about 25 minutes drive) and it looks beautiful but they don't take the scholarship (which is about $8,000 for the year that we qualify for - which would pay his full tuition and some left over to hire out an OT and Speech teacher for a session a week) and they aren't as flexible in dealing with a gifted child who has sensory disorder (when I asked the director who gave me a tour earlier in the year about how they handle gifted children - her response was "all of our children are gifted" and she had generic answers for most of my questions) where as this school that is a drive - is a home made into a school, doesn't have all the bells and whistles on the outside but is fully stocked with every imaginable montessori activity inside, the teacher knows her stuff and is very laid back and very dedicated...the rooms aren't as large as a typical montessori but it is very much do-able. The whole family drove out again today so my husband could look at it and it is very charming and my son is intrigued with the fact that there are 25 chickens and 4 pea-hens and the children are in charge of collecting the eggs when the chickens are laying...there is huge room for growth - it's on a 12 acre parcel of land...and I am amazed that he seems comfortable there - I guess I am just in that mommy mode in hoping that we are making the right decision - to travel to what seems like a really quaint school with a very dedicated teacher who seems willing to learn the quirks of my son as opposed to attending a very well known, top of the line Montessori school that is right around the corner...gut is saying to go with the quaint school and worst case scenario - we leave if it isn't a good fit and either homeschool or look at the possibility of the other montessori school and we would just loose the scholarship. (catch with the scholarship - no homeschooling allowed, no online school programs allowed and if you lose the scholarship by going to a non-McKay private school, you are not eligible for it again unless your child attends public school for one full year)...
Husband and I talked that tomorrow we are going out to do the paperwork at the commute school and will look at purchasing a laptop so as I can work at a starbucks that is about a 10 minute drive from his school when I need to get online and we were going to offer tomorrow (when I meet with the owner/teacher) my volunteer services for some hours during the day in hopes that she will let me finish my other work in one of her back rooms in the school. An afterschool program would just be too long a day for him - school starts at 9:00 which means we would leave a little after 8 and school gets out at 3:00 and they said that they would allow him to leave at 2:30 so as not to get home so late. Thanks so much
