My profoundly gifted child could enter our local public high school in the fall as a sophomore - skipping 9th grade because while he was in the middle school he was also taking classes at the high school - so he already has 5 high school math and science courses on his transcript. The quality of classes at our local school is mediocre and the gifted program is non-existant, but they are being flexible enough to allow the grade skip.

He has also been accepted into an excellent academic high school institution that would most likely provide an outstanding and far superior academic and social experience. They would view him as an incoming freshman. The problem is that this institution is located many hours away and would require splitting our family up (we have more than one child). For a variety of reasons, it's not likely that our son would be able to complete more than one year, possibly two, at this phenomenal institution. He would then have to return to his mediocre public high school.

Any thoughts on how important continuity is in high school? If he did one year at the "great" school and then returned to three mediocre years at the original high school - would that just be too dismal and depressing? Would that affect transcripts and the college application process? The best outcome would be to finish 4 years at the great school, but there's a 95% chance we won't be able to make that happen... given that, is it just better to grind out three years at the local high school and concentrate on making that the best experience possible while knowing we passed up the possibility to have one great year elsewhere?

He has friends at his local school now, but none that he considers "good friends" - mostly because they "don't get him". He thinks he would make more friends at this very selective school where he would be among peers... but then he would lose them after one year!

Any thoughts would be so appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim

Could he do the local school for 10th grade and then enter the wonderful school for Junior and Senior years? If not, I think I would keep the family together...but I only have a second grader, not close to crossing that bridge yet!

Wow, that one is tough. I don't think that I, personally, would have wanted to go to a really terrific school like that for one year and then have to come back to the dismal one, knowing what else was out there.

If you could manage two years at the good school, could he get the majority of his high school curriculum finished in that time? Because then you could consider just getting his GED and moving on to college.

To see how things could be and then have it all taken away would be tough, I would imagine. A bit like the bit in 'Murder in the first' when Kevin Bacon thinks that he has been freed from the 'Hole' only to find out that he has only been let out for a day because it is Christmas Day...