(WRT the anxiety, we've always dealt with DD's later repentance as cold feet, and encouraged her to stick with it - and she's never regretted sticking with it. She'd have backed out of the initial grade skip and every swim lesson ever if we hadn't made her stick with her original agreement.)
I think we may have the best principal ever. She emailed us on a Saturday to say that she'd back us if we wanted to push the issue of a placement in 6th grade math, but that there was going to be a dedicated 5th grade math teacher for the upcoming year (as opposed to the self-contained classrooms 5th graders had last year, with each teacher teaching all subjects) and that between that teacher and the full-time on-site gifted specialist (also new this year - last year we shared a gifted teacher with 2 other elementaries) that they'd be able to accommodate DD in the 5th grade classroom.
So I've requested that the in-class accommodation be defined not as "more of the same," and not as "tutoring other kids," and ideally as coaching DD to tackle competition problems using 5th grade skills, rather than just teaching DD ahead. And that the teachers actively discourage other kids from making "you're smarter than the rest of us" comments.
Waiting to hear back on whether that's doable, but assuming it is, that sounds like such a better plan to us.
