Thanks so much for everything guys, I am keeping track of all of these ideas for all of the meetings we have had (and will have). I have also been doing lots of research! We have an IEP meeting scheduled for Monday and I am reviewing all of this again as well as my other thread just to make sure I am totally ready to advocate!
One thing I am not sure about is how much to emphasize his academic needs vs the average learner or even the average gifted learner. Since his scores aren't very uniform it makes it harder for me to think of him as highly gifted (or whatever you might call it). Does it make sense with his scores to bring up the fact that the gifted program alone may not be enough for him (it's a weekly pull out)? I'm guessing we would advocate for subject acceleration in math and maybe sticking with his age mates for language based stuff, but what about science and social studies? He loves complex concepts and I anticipate he will be really bored learning lists of facts (what schools call history) and really basic science concepts. Do I go into the meeting thinking of DS as standard gifted or should I make it clear he has needs beyond what they are used to accommodating? How many kids with his abilities are they likely to have at the school?
I got an email from his current (gifted) school today about how great DS is doing on the current unit on thermodynamics. His teacher says he is able to understand and explain very difficult concepts, such as the idea of the universe as a closed system and that all energy that ever existed or will ever exist came from the initial singularity of the big bang. She was particularly impressed with his ability to come up with examples of the second law of thermodynamics, including putting an ice cube in a glass of water and waiting for it to melt before the glass of water achieves equilibrium. On the car ride home today he talked about entropy and some ideas about absolute zero and asked some questions I couldn't answer until I was able to consult with Google. I'm not sure what the public school is doing for science in first grade, but I doubt it is anything this interesting.
DS is really into the conceptual stuff and the big ideas, especially in math and science, but also in history. He loves learning about the evolution of humans and how the early people developed and spread throughout the world. I am pretty sure he knows more about these concepts than many adults. He also loves chemistry and genetics and anything to do with math theory, especially infinities.
With the IEP next week I'm totally freaking out about what it might actually mean for his education if we can't afford the gifted school next year. We don't hear about our financial aid for a few more weeks and if it isn't pretty significant we won't be able to use the gifted school again next year (tuition is over 26k with no aid). We had to sell our second car and have a strict budget (that only includes food) just to send him this year. If we end up getting less aid I'm just not sure we will be able to make it work. The fact that we are also paying over 7k in school taxes doesn't make the situation any easier to swallow. DS's happiness is our number one concern and he loves his current school, but realistically we need to consider all the options at this point.
So, a lot may or may not be riding on this IEP meeting and I need to treat it very seriously. I have multiple Google docs going with lists of ideas/concerns and important information about DS, much of which has come directly from the very helpful people of this board
I guess what I still need the most help with is how to present his giftedness and what to push for academically. Based on conversations I have had with the people involved with the testing it sounds like they are quite willing to accommodate his areas of weakness (mostly writing), so I don't think I will have a battle there. I might also want to ask for adaptive PE, or to at least have it as an option if regular PE isn't working out. I'm pretty sure they won't have coding (his favorite subject) and if he wants to continue learning to read music we will have to do that at home as well. And obviously no Mandarin (and that's something we can't teach at home, lol!) This is getting scary, I hope we get the financial aid decision soon, I'm going crazy here
