My husband and I are exploring the idea of moving from San Francisco to a smaller, less expensive city where our kids can go to a high quality public school, preferably one that has a good program for gifted kids. My husband can work remotely so we can be fairly flexible about location. Our life here simply isn’t sustainable. We cannot afford to buy a house if we continue to pay for two kids in private school ($60,000 a year). We have great jobs but we cannot get ahead with the cost of living here. We are fantasizing about moving to a smaller city where we can buy a house with a yard, where there are more families, where kids go to the same school and can play outside together. Our kids now spend 1.5 hours a day in cars and buses commuting to and from school and we would like to reduce that time.
I’ve read good things about the public schools in Seattle on this board but recently read that there is a funding crisis and that some gifted programs are being eliminated. If we moved, I would like to get our kids into a school with a gifted program- or the Highly Capable Cohort program. Is that difficult to do? My older son had a WPPSI a couple of years ago and scored in the 99th percentile. Should I assume that he would be able to test into the program? My younger son is starting kindergarten in the fall and hasn’t been tested but he seems to be as smart as his brother but without any of his brother’s challenges and I’m guessing his scores might come out even higher than his brother’s.
Can any people from Seattle weigh in about what the public schools are actually like and how certain we could be of getting our kids into a gifted program? I am hesitant to make a move and take our kids out of their excellent private school where we have been so happy and move them to a public school that won’t be able to accommodate their needs.
I would also love to hear from people who have made the move from a small private school to a public school. Contemplating this makes me nervous. Our kids’ school is project based with an emphasis on STEAM. It’s fantastic and the kids spend much of their time being creative and problem solving, doing engineering challenges and building their own playground. My older son is a quirky introvert and he is very happy. On the other hand, while the student population is very bright smart (a large percentage of parents have Phds and are scientists, engineers and doctors) it seems that my son still has few real peers. His teachers have noted that his conceptual understanding in science and math is beyond his peers and he sometimes seems disengaged and bored. He’s in first grade but reading at a 6th grade level and while most of the kids are probably reading above grade level, there is maybe one other student in the grade who is similarly advanced with reading (but not in math or science). My son is a nerdy kid who is obsessed with science and is uninterested in playing with the other boys, who like to play spy or Star Wars. While he gets along with most of the kids in his class, he doesn't really have any friends and spends most of his time alone. I wonder if he would be better off in a public school program that doesn’t have the bells and whistles but where he is surrounded by intellectual peers and might find another nerdy book who he has more in common with? A psychologist has advised us that having intellectual peers is critical and that any social difficulties he has would mostly disappear among peers (we find this to be true) but how do we weigh the benefits of a small, interesting program that is so focused on creative thinking and problem solving against a less flexible public school where my son may have more peers?
I’d love any perspective or leads anybody can provide. Thank you!
Last edited by Lepa; 05/18/17 09:47 PM.
