I am very scared to be making a wrong decision and picking the wrong private school. However, having talked with a handful of parents in the past week, the private gifted school option is looking more and more appealing.
That said, I have a meeting with the school's superintendent this week, so we will see if she is open to considering acceleration or not. If she isn't, I've decided to give-up and just go try the private school out. Even if she is, we still have decisions to make because I am partly convinced the private school might be a better fit.
I was in a similar situation to yours last school year. DS was so across-the-board advanced for Kindergarten at that school that the thought of him not being accelerated to second grade there was really frightening. To me, acceleration was the
minimum acceptable response from the school for him... yet that suggestion was met with so much resistance from his principal, teacher, and gifted coordinator that I saw the up-mountain battle looming directly ahead of me.
When I received the acceptance letter from the gifted school, I learned that I had to make a decision about enrolling him there mid-appeal at his public school. It was an agonizing decision, partly because I had bought into the idea that the public school could provide an appropriately challenging education for him if given the opportunity. But... throughout the year, they had verbally assured me they could do this yet kept demonstrating that they couldn't. While I would have liked to have seen the appeal the entire way through, turning down enrollment at the gifted school would have meant risking no acceleration at the public school.
It was an agonizing decision, and there were times I felt like I could barely breathe. But then I told myself, "Hey, I'm only committing to this for a year. If this doesn't work out, we can try something else." And that was very reassuring to me. I
knew in my gut that "giving up" at the public school (I felt that way, too) was the best thing for us as a family.
He's been at his new school for a few months now, and it's a really good fit for him. Those fears about making the wrong decision have subsided.
Good luck to you!
