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Welcome, blueberry!

Appeals processes depend on the local educational authority in your area, as each one has different policies for identifying eligible students. Without knowing your specific LEA, only fairly general thoughts can be offered. (And please don't feel pressure to post any personal information you don't feel comfortable posting.)

But some general thoughts:

LEAs often use criteria such as cognitive screeners/measures (e.g., CogAT), achievement measures (e.g., iReady), grades (probably irrelevant at this grade level) and teacher nominations (often heavily weighted). In your DC's case, the cognitive measures are well above typical GT levels, but the achievement measures will depend on where they have decided to set the cutoff this year--which may not be a fixed number, as sometimes this has to do with the number of children/number of slots in program.

On the CogAT, 132 is +2 SD (98th %ile). It may be that the LEA has decided that students need to meet/exceed the 98th %ile on all measures to qualify, in which case the reading score would be the one measure that does not. Districts make different decisions on these cut scores. They are allowed to do so, as long as the criteria are applied equitably.

You certainly would be within your rights to inquire about the appeal process, and to request additional transparency regarding the selection process. If they use a holistic process (such as one including teacher comments or nominations), this might be met with less openness, mainly to protect the teacher from parent reprisals (which do happen, unfortunately).

Coddling removes the important benefit of students developing "internal locus of control" (or self-efficacy) from the college experience;
students who do not exercise their own ingenuity to solve dilemmas, avoid potentially detrimental situations, and advance their advocacy skills may instead learn a sense of dependence on the system which supported them.

The result may be a college system which is turning out adults who are not resilient, independent, capable, organized, self-reliant producers, contributors, schedulers, planners, leaders, negotiators, and problem solvers who value their self-discipline and ability to prioritize and budget their time, money, and talent, and seek or create opportunities to better themselves, increase their knowledge base through lifelong learning, and help others... but may instead remain stuck in an immature mindest of requiring and being dependent upon constant and continual assistance at others' expense of time, money, and talent.