Originally Posted by Wren
That is great news Wyldkat. I missed most of this story and you said your district was bad, is this a private school or a new development in the district program?


You know I don't think the whole story is written down in one place anywhere so I'll just toss in a quick version here.

July 2008 I read an article about gifted kids and said "This sounds like Wolf." I went online, did some research (Yay Hoagies!), found out about early K entrance and contacted my district to find out if it was an option in our area. Mind you at that point I wasn't gung ho about placing him in early K, I JUST wanted to know if it was possible. Mid August 08 I found one person who actually knew the answer and wasn't rude. Then I was put in contact with the charter system and told he could start with one of their school (homeschool based system). Next I was told he couldn't because the school was full (lie). I was told by the district to homeschool K in 08-09 so we did and I just let him go at his own pace.

I quickly realized that a grade skip would do him a lot of good and talked with the principal of the charter schools again to see about getting him placed in 1st at 5yrs. There was much hassle, much disbelief and finally they allowed me to give him grade assessment tests at home. I think they wanted to prove to me I was seeing things that weren't there and pushing him and ruining his childhood, etc... I asked what to do if he aced them, they said come back and get the next level. By the time I asked for grade 3 math they were getting really tired of me.

I talked with one charter and both Wolf and I were treated rudely. I finally had an appt. with the teacher of the charter he would probably end up with and I spent a half an hour being lectured about how I was not allowing him to be a child. I didn't get to ask most of my questions about the program. That was the last straw.

I called the Independent Study program in the public school system of the neighboring district. I had talked to them before when we had thought about moving there. I told the head teacher all about Wolf and what he could do. She loved the idea of having him as a student. Then I told her the thing that turned everyone else off, he would be 5 in August 09. She had no idea what the problem with that was. He was my kid and I knew him better than she did. She was willing to take everything I said site unseen. She also specifically requested that he be her student and was willing to fight to get a transfer to go through if that was what it would take.

We applied for a interdistrict transfer and they were going to make us go through a bunch of red tape since we hadn't even enrolled in our home district yet, but the person in charge was the first person I had talked to who originally and I told her exactly what had happened and she pushed it through on her end. I had to wait till the day school started here to get the official confirmation that it went through though.

Hmmm I don't do short well...

Last edited by Wyldkat; 08/27/09 11:40 PM.