You've received great replies above.
Active, involved parents with gifted children in a local public school district used to have a great grassroots parent group. The local public school district shut the group down, replacing it with a do-nothing group controlled by the public school district. This group is conducted much the same as the group described in spaghetti's post:
Our school district has a whole network set up. Does your school district have anything like that (information sessions for parents would be a start). We have parent volunteers representing each school to the district (who do absolutely nothing and have no power -- all they do is meet and find out the news from GT)
The public school district has changed the direction of communication from parent-to-parent and parent-to-school, to district-to-parent... largely isolating and disempowering parents, while creating a sense of competition and a lack of trust among parents. This is consistent with the direction in which public schools are moving: to produce
equal outcomes among all pupils.
Meanwhile, active, involved parents with gifted children in a local private/independent school district have a great grassroots parent group. They meet monthly, with each month's free-ranging discussion sparked by an article, book, or book chapter by an expert in giftedness. While parents may learn new information from the month's resource, conversation often turns to educational planning, advocacy, and parent-to-parent support on gifted issues.
I'm also familiar with groups which have at times offered games/activities for gifted kids while parents meet, however these groups face a variety of issues (displeasure when the games/activities do not cater to the interests of a specific family's child/ren... parent-desired level of qualifications of those interacting with the children... 2e issues... discipline... insurance). Unfortunately some parents choose the role of evaluating these groups as compared with other "gifted services," rather than appreciating the benefits of active participation in a local grassroots parent group.
