In the back of this book, Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind by Deborah L. Ruf
there is a little table that talks about the kinds of schools and how they interact with the kind of gifted kids you may have. It's worth looking at. Is homeschooling an option? Does either of the locations allow one of the parents to stay home - that's sort of the only fail safe method.
I agree with Ania that "blue collar" schools can do a much better job being flexable, and have seen it happen many times. By contrast, schools with gifted programs and coordinators can be very territorial and feel that their way meets the needs of all gifted students, when really it may be that 2E and HG/PG student's needs just aren't being met. I was told by one such that my child couldn't possibly have a high enough IQ score to justify a grade skip, and that in his old community kids like him were a dime-a-dozen.
But after all that, I can say that I consider a good fit school to be essential to the family life you are going to want. Gifted charter schools can be wonderful, and I've heard lots of wonderful stories of happy families. I would visit the charter schools, look at the kids, see what the teachers are like in the full day programs. It can really be wonderful if it works. My personal situation is a private school, which doesn't specialize in gifted, that has gone all out for my DS10. I wouldn't have thought that the little boost from being in a smaller class size and a single grade skip would have been enought to justify the cost, but it has. Ruf's work has really helped me see that sometimes a little of accomidation go a long way.
I've been reading Keys to Parenting the Gifted Child by Sylvia B. Rimm this week. She argues that Underachievment comes from one or both parents empowering the child in child-teacher interactions, and allowing the child to "get off the hook" from difficult learning situations. So you could concieve of getting yourself to a school setting you have confidence in as a way of building a healthly parent-teacher alliance that allows your child to face the hard stuff. (BTW - I thought that underachievement comes from having to do endless single digit addition worksheets when on is ready to learn multiplication.)
One more idea is that the very nature of your relationship with your children is going to matter quite a bit. If you can manage the "of course MY children are going to do their grade times 10 minutes of homework per night, no matter what the teacher does or doesn't assign" then your children are protected from some of the worst kinds of underachievement. I didn't have to foresight to pull this off. I think I would have had to establish myself as a more "Authoritarian" Figure way back in the vegtable-eating days. If I had it to do over, I would have tried to find a few more rules I could put my heart and soul into, and fought harder over them. As it was, I was working outside the home, and wanted "my time" to be snuggly and sweet. I was also trying desperatly not to "infect" my child with Giftedness by "teaching" him too much that he'd have to endure being "re-taught" in school. Notice that I took complete responsibility for the school choosing not to educate my child? Back then I thought that Giftedness was somehow "my fault" and that if I "behaved" my son wouldn't "catch it." I had totally bought the argument that social development was the key thing and that intellectual development would take care of itself, perhaps at College. ((eyes rolling))
Well - I don't know if this answers your question, but I wish you well!
Trinity
