I am a long time lurker and infrequent poster, but I wanted to share some good news on the advocacy front, especially since I picked up much good advice from this site. I am hoping to balance out some of the concerns about all the negative issues and problems that seem to come along for so many with the start of a new school year.
My DD7 was ID'd by the school (after much pushing on my part) in late K and placed in the gifted pull-out. I had concerns with the school testing and had private testing which came out HG/HG+. I mentioned the possibility of accelerating past first grade and got no traction.
Last year first grade came along and despite being in the high reading group, the once a week (all day) gifted pull-out, and a reasonably cooperative teacher, things were deteriorating by the time we came back from winter break. We had near daily breakdowns at home in the evenings and physical and emotional distress every day about going to school. Problem was - everything looked great at school - behavior had shaped up, she was fitting in, getting along, teachers and principal saw nothing to be concerned about . As I saw it, she was using all her emotional energy to fit in all day at school and fell apart at home.
Talked to classroom teacher and gifted teacher about skipping second grade - after a couple of discussions they agreed with the concept. Spoke to the principal in May (provided a copy of Iowa Acceleraton Scale, Nation Deceived, etc.)- she has been in the school system as a teacher and administrator more than 20 years, had only seen two skips, neither had gone well, so she thought about it and said "No".
I coordinated with the District over the summer - school psychologist and District gifted coordinator all reveiwed private testing info and agreed that skip was a reasonable option, but most staff were not available until the week before the start of the school year. With this explanation, principal wanted to delay an EP meeting to discuss this until 2-3 weeks after school had started.
I felt like I had tried the informal route and was getting nowhere, so at the end of July I wrote a letter to the principal, specifically requesting a full-grade acceleration (along with some other supporting language). I figured out that under Florida gifted rules you can't always make the schools do something, but they have to justify in writing why they refuse to do something that is specifically requested. I thought that they might pick the easier choice to do what I asked rather than explain why they thought acceleration wasn't a good idea.
I didn't hear anything for 2 weeks after I sent the letter, so I called the school the week before classes started. Lo and behold, the principal told me they would go ahead and accelerate DD into a third grade classroom on a trial basis for 5 weeks and see how things went.
We haven't had our official review to lock this in, but here we are now 4 weeks into the school year - DD7 tested into the highest reading group in 3rd grade, is in the 3rd grade gifted pull-out and is getting glowing reviews so far from the 3rd grade teacher. She has a classmate who is not accelerated, but who is likely HG as well. Even Daddy who was very unsure about the skip has noticed that she is much happier in school. We have a much better school fit than second grade would have been!
I believe that we will have some work ahead of us later in the year as some of the novelty wears off and the pace slows down, but for now we can celebrate a little victory that gives us a few months of breathing room.
So does she like school more? How have the evenings at home been?