So sorry Trout. My heart goes out to you, it is so scary to hear educators saying such ignorant things. It doesn't surprise me, but it still is quite disheartening. I just had my first meeting at my sons school, a public school. I met with the principal and asst superintendent today to plan for next year. I had sent them DS4's huge evaluation with lots of thoughts and recommendations for DS4's education. DS will be DYS eligible in the summer when he turns 5 and I plan to apply.
I have to say, I can't believe the lunch cart comment. How ridiculous. I must say, that although my meeting went "okay" today, I heard a couple similar comments. My favorite was a reference to sports. It started like this..
Principle: Is your son in any sports, or do you plan on him being in any?
Me: He likes sports, so we will probably look into it
P: well that could be a problem if we accelerated him...because he wouldn't really be with peers
Me: I don't get what you mean
P: well, I think that tee ball is based on age....and if he were to play he wouldn't be with kids from his grade and wouldn't be with his peers.
Me: I don't see that as an issue at all, definitely not a reason to not accelerate him
I am not sure what our school is going to do. They started off by saying that they are sure they can find a K classroom to suit his needs. To which I explained that I don't think any K class would suit his needs if it is still K. They did agree to allow him to skip the K screening (I hadn't even asked for this, they just said that they didn't find it necessary) and instead will have him come into a 1st and 2nd grade classroom in a few weeks for morning to observe him in their centers. I am not sure what information this will provide them, but apparently they want to observe him. If it will help me out, that is fine. If it makes them say no...well I have a lot more fight in me. : ) They have told me that some kids have been accelerated, and at least one of them seemed to agree that in this case it would be best to just get it over with early since we know it is going to happen instead of having him make friends and then skip a grade next year. They were clearly anti-multiple skips. They have apparently never seen that and were really focused on staying with age peers, give or take a year. So who knows. I hope that HS will work well for you and wish the best of luck. Please know you aren't alone. There are others out there for sure. : )
