I agree with CFK�s post above regarding the difficulty of dealing with public schools in our area. That said, I think I would be very happy with some of the school districts just over the state lines.

Regarding the original question concerning skipping K, we have the unique perspective of one child who attended K for two years and one who skipped it altogether.

Our daughter was early entranced to K at private pre-K school and made to repeat it when we moved her to the public school because she missed the first grade cut-off by less than six weeks. The standards were lower for her second year of K at the public school. She had mastered every objective for the year (as listed on the report card) by age two. Yada yada yada, she was moved to Catholic school and skipped 2nd grade for an effective reversal of the public school retention and lives happily ever after!

Our son was early entranced to 1st grade at the same Catholic school, skipping K altogether. He had already �checked out� of pre-school two years prior. Luckily, his pre-school was flexible enough that they allowed him to read during nap time and play quietly with building materials instead of participating in circle time. They were also the first to mention the �G� word.

Skipping first hasn�t been enough of an accommodation for him, but I can�t even imagine how miserable he would have been had we kept him with his �legal� grade in our public district!

St. Pauli girl,
We happen to be Catholic, so sending our kids to Catholic school makes sense as we don�t have to worry about weekly religion classes for Communion and Confirmation preparation. That said, we send them to Catholic school for the more advanced education rather than religious training. Luckily, the curriculum is in agreement with mainstream education and science. This year, DS learned in-depth about human evolution in 6th grade and DD had very candid sex ed in 8th grade. Respect for religious diversity is also a prominent theme.

I would also avoid a school which claims dinosaurs never existed!