30 kids k through 8 means 4 is a actually a large class. How many teachers do they have to teach so few children, and are they qualified between them to teach such a large age range in all required subjects? Can they demonstrate experience in teaching HG (as opposed it bright to MG) children? What is the population they serve like - will your dd have peers? 4 is an awfully small number to find someone to click with. Can she shadow, or enrol for a trial period? If you do enrol her, what is your financial commitment if things go downhill - and in such a tiny school, it sounds as if things could go from great to horrible pretty fast. Her one true peer leaving could be it. And if she does have to leave the school, what are her options?
When I toured there were 5 different classrooms with mixed ages. There are 6 different teachers (including science/stem, foreign language, music, etc...). The kids can move to and from classrooms based on their academic needs. They also have lunch altogether so it has a sort of montessori feel to it and dd would be able to be with older kids - she does better with either kids older than her or younger than her. They do a lot of hands on learning so while they do do some worksheets they will actually do hands on projects related to what they are learning (i.e. when they were learning about cells they then made their own cells out of marshmallows, when they learned about the solar system they made model solar systems out of Styrofoam balls, etc..) Dd is much more of a visual learner so this would be ideal for her imo.
She is actually scheduled to do a 2 day shadow to try it out which I really like. However, as I mentioned in my reply to polarbear, moving back to her current school would be a difficult option... and then add to it the financial burden of private school.
