BTW, to answer your original question:
In your experience, would a kid at her level do okay in our public school without gifted services?
Our son did fine in the same basic situation you describe for his K year with a *great* teacher who recogized him as GT, felt the need to teach him something even though he was ahead, and did a fabulous job of differentiating the curriculum. Plus it was a half-day, mostly play-based curriculum, so he had time to himself to pursue his interests outside of school. It was a good year. His stoplight for discipline issues never went to yellow--not once all year!
He did
NOT do okay in this situation in 1st grade with a full-day, highly academic program--meaning all letter sounds all the time: ugh!--and a not-good teacher who did not feel the need to teach him anything, did not differentiate, and didn't recognize that his acting out was a sign of mild brain death, not discipline problems.
He was angry, sad, frustrated and disappointed in everyone who was supposed to be taking care of him. The light was going out of his eyes. He was thinking of himself as a bad kid.
We pulled him out for "emergency homeschooling," and it was the right thing for us to do.
I'm not saying that's what you or anyone else should do. Every case is different. But in our particular "good" school system, it was pretty clear that I could slave away at advocating for my child and not doing very well at it--SO not my strength!
--or I could spend that time just teaching him. The latter was more appealing to me and seemed a better solution for our particular child, so that's what we did.
In a more flexible school or in an area less friendly to homeschooling, I'd have gone another route. But in our case, it was the obvious choice.
<shrug> FWIW...
