EngineerMom and Lmom-
I feel your pain. I think that the lack of schools is probably because not every gifted family can afford private school, and we are talking about maybe 5 percent of the student population. (In an area with 5000 children in school, 5% is just 250 students - nearly all of them would have to attend the same school to support it).
For some help, though, I will offer you this. When I was starting HS, my family moved from a large school district with gifted grouping to a rural area with no differentiation. I convinced the school to let me take college classes and have them count for my grades in HS, and they went along with it, and the university costs were reduced. I suggest that (for your DS12, at least), you talk to state colleges to see what sort of dual enrollment options they have. Best of luck.
