Mia,
Thanks for the warning and I had a steep learning curve last year while advocating for health and wellness issues at the school. It reminded me of a quote from the book �Straight Man� by Richard Russo. The main character was describing the university budget process and said, �This budgetary danse macabre, a semester-by-semester ritual is ridiculous. There�s no valid reason why we can�t be told the semester before if the soft money to cover all necessary sections of freshman composition will in fact be made available. To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.� There were a few other good quotes that captured the frustration in advocating.

So I�m going in expecting the gifted danse macabre but at least the district seems relatively progressive when it comes to gifted education. It�s the only district in the state with a magnet school accelerated cluster for full time gifted education (unfortunately it doesn�t start until grade 3) and there is a local chapter of the state gifted advocacy group. A nationally renowned psychologist in gifted issues practices in our town and is a coauthor of �A Parents Guide to Gifted Children.� He spoke at a gifted advocacy night held at the magnet school and the district�s website has some of his articles posted on the gifted education section. If we can�t get by roadblocks at the school, we�ll probably pay the big bucks for him to do an assessment and advocate on our daughter�s behalf.

In the meantime, I�m trying to be �patiently impatient� as was recommended in �A Parent�s Guide to Gifted Education.� I read another quote somewhere else that I�m trying to keep in mind:
�The essence of advocacy is to keep a conversation going.� Bob Babbage

I sent in letters to the school today asking for MAP test clarification so now I�m back to repeating the �patiently impatient� mantra to myself and providing enrichment at home.

Last edited by inky; 10/13/08 08:14 AM. Reason: typo