indigo - I get frustrated and mad for other parents when I read through their stories on this board! But thank you for understanding my frustrations. By the way, there are no state/provincial laws - it is up to the school to decide however when i called the superintendent's office, i was told "studies have shown grade skipping showed disastrous results."
Our pro/con list is pretty much what you had detailed and unfortunately right now the convenient 2 minute walk is weighted pretty heavily on the pro list. We both work full-time, and while our jobs are flexible it is so disruptive to take 30 minutes out to pick her up, only to pick up her sibling at a different school 1 hour later.
Both schools have agreed to meet with us (i'm taking that as a good sign), and I am now putting together a package - IQ test report, current school's first term report card, and some work samples. I'm thinking of also asking her teacher to write something to confirm what she has covered and some comments on her abilities.
I feel like the gifted program has to be stellar in order for me to think it's worth it. Deep down I know that she needs to be with advanced kids in order to try hard; otherwise, she does the bare minimum because it's still leaps and bounds ahead of her peers. There is a nearby "gifted" school that shows weekly spelling tests for the classrooms and i sighed looking at the words for the second grade class. I asked my daughter before bed if she could spell some of those words, and she recited the spelling without skipping a beat.
