This is a story of failure and success in finding an appropriate school for Wolf (I copied it from my blog about the boys and added a bit):
In July 2008 I read an article about gifted kids and said "This sounds like Wolf." I went online and did some research (ok, a WHOLE lot of research). It turns out that most kids aren't doing math when they are three, I honestly had no idea that was out of the ordinary. In my research I found out about early Kindergarten 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 K early, I JUST wanted to know if it was possible. Mid August 2008 I finally found one person in the school district who actually knew the answer and wasn't rude which was a nice change. I was then put in contact with the charter system and told that Wolf could start with one of their schools (homeschool based system) that fall. Shortly afterward I was told he couldn't because the school was full (which the principal later told me was a lie). I was told by the district to homeschool Kindergarten in 08-09 so we did and I just let him go at his own pace.
I quickly realized that a grade skip, in other words starting 1st grade when he was five, would do him a lot of good. It would be a closer academic fit, he was ready for it socially and then he wouldn't have to skip later when there was more social stigma and stress involved. I talked with the principal of the charter schools again to see about getting him placed in 1st in fall 2009. There was much hassle and much disbelief in his abilities. The principal finally suggested that I give him grade assessment tests at home. I think they wanted to prove to me that I was seeing things that weren't there, was pushing him, 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 us. The secretary even asked me why I was doing it.
I talked with one charter and both Wolf and I were treated rudely. Wolf was talked down to and we were pretty much disregarded. One teacher even said, "Oh don't worry some of the parents bring their preschoolers so he'll have kids to play with." We finally had an appointment with the teacher of the charter he would probably end up in 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. I guess children are supposed to be bored and unchallenged since that was the only thing I was trying to prevent. 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 2009. 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 sight 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. However the person in charge was the first person I had talked to originally and I told her exactly what had happened and she pushed it through on her end, the only thing that went smoothly for us in that district. We had to wait till the day school started here to get the official confirmation that it went through though, but it did and now Wolf is blasting his way through 1st grade through high school level work. He's even getting to study Logic and Spanish to keep him challenged. He is loving it and the fit is perfect.
His teacher helped us apply to Davidson and made it possible for us to meet with someone in the district who works with gifted kids to get some idea of what to do with him, since she and I are mostly flying by the seat of our pants.
It took a year of being taught very roughly that school districts and most school staff are less interested in a child's education than keeping the status quo and fitting all the pegs in their round holes whether or not the pegs themselves are round or square, but we found the perfect fit in the end.
