Welcome! And you're certainly not alone. I don't know of anyone who has not had to work at least a little to try to find appropriate placement for their GT kiddo.
Since your school gave you the "we don't have GT until 3rd grade" line, I'll share my experience. Our school also had no formal GT until 3rd, but we approached the Gifted Coordinator before our DS entered the school system with our concerns. We approached it as asking for help "We've got these crazy scores, and a kid who taught himself to read at 3 - can you help us figure out what to do with him?" The GT staff hopefully should be familiar with levels of giftedness, and hopefully they will help you in your advocacy. In our case, the GT Coordinator acted as a liaison with the principal, and convinced the school that our DS needed more.
Even though things seemed to have gone smoothly in that the school recognized that our DS was different, it took a long time for anything to happen. What finally really helped was the school tested our DS using their own tests (in our case the WJ and MAP). Then they really got it, and started to differentiate. At the end of kindy last year, we also had to do some advocacy to get a grade skip for our DS, because they told us he was at least 2 years ahead in math and reading, but they were planning to put him in 1st with differentiation. We provided the school with a copy of the Iowa Acceleration Scale (a great form that considers the many different factors of skipping to determine if your child would be a good candidate).
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Resources/IAS.aspx The school filled it out and finally agreed to the skip. Our DS still needs differentiation even with the skip. We plan to be advocates for a long time!
Good luck, and please post all your questions along the way. Someone will help!
