Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Sacrifices your family has made...special schools?

Just wondering how common it is for parents of G/HG kids to make special accommodations for schooling. Private schools that offer accelerated curriculums for kids to learn at a quicker pace? Magnet schools with special electives/AG classes? How for do you travel for school and is it worth it? And the price of private school...just wondering how everyone deals with this choice.

I do not think anyone should go bankrupt so to speak to send a child to a private school. Plus, I am not convinced that the majority of private schools can accommodate a gifted child. I believe that home schooling or public cyber charter school are a potentially better and cheaper choice for gifted kids;)

Currently, we use a public cyber charter school for my ds that has a rigorous and flexible curriculum. We tried a local private and it was not able to individualize enough to meet my ds's needs:( Plus, we cannot afford it.

classicsmom - what is a public cyber charter school?

I would like to check this out.

I'm interested too...

I think the degree of sacrifice involved in educating a highly gifted kid is largely a function of luck and where you live. We bought our house before giftedness was a thought in our minds, and yet, INCREDIBLY, we just happen to live only 10 minutes from a small, relatively affordable, private school (K through 12) that truly does provide an individualized curriculum for all kids. My 4 year old son is being taught fourth grade spelling and grammar in a kindergarten class of less than 10 kids, for $6,400 a year. That is no more than I would have paid for another year of preschool, where my son was "learning" the ABCs in a class of 18 kids. I've been reading this forum long enough to know that having this school as an option is akin to winning the lottery, so I think of the money as a pretty small sacrifice (although my husband feels the pain more than I do). I don't know how we'd manage in a place where the public schools are no good and good private schools are hours away or $20,000 a year.

Amazing.

DD7 goes to a private.

DH drives her in the AM usually. This adds about 30 extra minutes of driving onto his day.

I do afternoon pick up which usually involves checking in with a teacher if available. (DD is accelerated in some subjects and is in enrichment for others. So I feel like I need to touch base more often than most parents.) Afternoon pickup takes about 60-90 minutes round trip.

I volunteer at the school about 5 hours a week. It breaks up the driving and helps me stay informed on what's going on. Okay, I spy on dd a little too.

Legally, we are entitled to public bussing. Originally the bus drop off time was 4:10 which is about we get home if I drive. So we were really happy to use the service. For some reason the routes have been combined and the new drop off time is 5. She's the youngest and the last stop. Because of her age, I have to meet her at the bus stop. Now with the later time, evenings were getting to stressful. So I am back to driving every afternoon.

So the time feels like the biggest sacrifce to me because we deal with it everyday. It impacts us financially too. I don't think I could handle working full time and be at the school as much as I am. (I have small part time job...)

We do get help with the tuition bill. We try to live frugally. We drive small, older cars. No wii or disney trips...

We are also all taking music lessons. DD practices after dinner. Sometimes I practice with her, and sometimes by myself. DH tends to practice after bedtime. So there's another 3*30 minutes of our day.

I don't really know if HS would be more, or less of a sacrifice in terms of time and money. I'm guessing HS for us would mean me not working at all. There aren't any gifted schools in our area, public or charter. I'm sure if dd was schooling for "free" we would end up spending more on music and dance lessons and probably add robotics or something else spendy. DD's GPs are a lot more sympathetic to large tuition bills than they would be to HS - that's just us, but there it it.

I am a SAHM in order to homeschool my DC. So we sacrifice half our income. We do not have any private or other public options within a reasonable distance. There is a possibility of a high school one county over but the drive would be more than 2 hours a day.

Unfortunately, it is not available in every state, but it is definitely worth lobbying for. It is public school at home essentially. The school provides you with a loaner computer, scads of textbooks, art supplies, science and math supplies, etc. They also supply the curriculum and spell it out for the parent on how to teach each lesson. They also have teachers that oversee your child's work. In older grades, a child may have a teacher for each subject. Currently, my son has 2 mandatory online classes with his teacher each month. He also has 3 face to face sessions each year with her as well. He has 3 classes each month for the advanced learner program as well as a foreign language instructor with a weekly class. He has the option to take numerous supplementary classes if we choose it. Plus the school offers numerous field trips and the like. They also offer extensive tutoring if desired. Our school uses the K12 curriculum which I am quite please with since it is classical like and rigorous. A student can advance in math and english as much as he wants. Plus it is possible to placed at a higher grade level as well. It is also flexible enough to allow my son to explore other subjects and attend a weekly, all day co-op.
I find it to be a great option and it is free:) You just need a parent or other family member to help teach and supervise the child. Some schools in our state offer extensive online classes with a teacher to relieve the parent of teaching duties so to speak as well. I hope eventually every state has this option. I also think brick and mortor (sp?) public schools benefit if they offer individualization via online classes in school.
http://k12.com/schools-programs/online-public-schools/

Wolf is in Independent Study through a neighboring public school district. It takes me a half an hour +/- to get him to class once a week and up to 45 min (sometimes more) to get him to the field trip each week. It took A LOT of effort to figure out a good placement for him and even more to get him into it.

The nearest private school that deals with gifties (I interviewed them and didn't like it...) is around half an hour away with no traffic and he would have to go 5 days a week. It's also $10,000! So not going to happen...