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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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Joined: Feb 2013
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Thanks for the suggestions everyone. This is definitely helping.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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It is really helpful with a virtual school that the duty of care is always (ultimately) with parents. The school can't do ANY unilateral decision-making that we recognize as toxic-- because we simply opt to not expose our kids to it and do something else while it gets settled. My favorite thing about this model, in fact. 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Jun 2011
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When IS this mystery meeting? Gosh darn I need for the suspense to be over!
...reading is pleasure, not just something teachers make you do in school.~B. Cleary
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,261 Likes: 8
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...we'll listen to what they have to tell us Yes, it is good to have them speak first. If asked to speak first, you may simply wish to ask why they called the meeting, and ask for introductions of all who are present. You may wish to take notes. Great advice from other posters: Okay-- if they say something unexpected (distinct possibility, right, since they've left you in the dark)--
be noncommittal.
"Hmm. That's interesting. We will need to consider this. Can we follow up in a week?" ... At this point, you don't even know for sure who is invited to this meeting-- whether it involves corporate/national or just local administrators... I have been to more than a few school meetings where something was said or a direction was taken that caught me by suprise and I wasn't prepared for. My choice has always been to do my best to not react, leave any potential emotion out of it, and simply say "This is new information" (or "unexpected information"). I will take some time to think it over (you can say a week or ten days or two days or whatever if you want to, or just say "some time") and then I'll be in touch."
I wouldn't give any answers at the actual meeting or put anything else out there for the school... Personally, in that situation, I would listen to what they have to say, and then, if necessary ask for another meeting at a later date in order to properly prepare my response. I would not let them push me into a decision at that meeting, without time to think about it... I would tell them as little as possible about your plans while you are at the meeting. We've had similar meetings and our message was always, "We want to make this work and we don't want to have to leave the school, so what can we do?" Your message might be "We don't want to involve the district, so we can we do?" You may also wish to write a friendly e-mail summarizing the meeting, areas of agreement, timeframes, decisions deferred, date/time of any follow-up meeting, etc?
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Joined: Apr 2013
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Some schools may monitor the educational process in the home by tracking computer usage, for example: logging website visits, turning on the video cam and computer microphone. This creates a different type of partnership, one of unequals: laborers and overseers. ... this post has troubled me... Is this with or without permission? I would think without permission would open a school up for considerable liability... What a school deems necessary oversight may vary, as may any notifications in parent or student handbooks vis-a-vis terms of use, privacy policies, academic honesty policies, etc. B&Ms which issue or require laptops/i-Pads, online courses, and virtual schools may have policies which parents may look up or ask about. Rather than delve into debating specifics of any particular case, the point on-topic was to raise awareness that monitoring can occur. Institutions may have the upper hand, as they may write permissions and/or notifications into policy. IT World shows several answers posted to the question, "How can I tell if my laptop is being monitored?" This may be found online using a search engine. The content of gifted forum posts may also be found listed among the results provided by search engines.
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Joined: Feb 2013
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Thanks for all the advice everyone. I feel as ready as I can be. I'm just going to try to relax. And wait.
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Joined: Jun 2011
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...reading is pleasure, not just something teachers make you do in school.~B. Cleary
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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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Okay with all the uncertainty, it wasn't too bad in the end. I wish they hadn't made us wait a couple of weeks to have any idea what they were thinking.
They will allow the acceleration we want, at least in the short term (they hadn't always allowed it in the past, hence our concern) so at least the near future is taken care of for now (and we avoid any fights or dramas, phew).
One thing they brought up was that a student may not get high school credit for high school courses taken while in elementary school, nor for college courses taken while in high school. So if a kid is too advanced, they may not be able to graduate from high school. I don't think they are BSing us, as I have read people on this forum bringing up this kind of anomaly, and I suppose a school administrator should be watching out for this kind of thing and warning us. Then they asked us if we'd consider doing this or that to avoid this scenario, but we said no we just want to let DS move through the courses at his pace and when it comes to things like high school credit we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. There will surely be some (common sense?) solution to the high school credit problem, so we just want them (the virtual school) to deliver the courses when needed. We'll see what happens, but at least we've got a better idea of where they stand.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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There will surely be some (common sense?) solution to the high school credit problem, so we just want them (the virtual school) to deliver the courses when needed. Ooooooo-- I'd be very very careful there. There is state education bureaucracy underneath that one, so assuming common sense may not be a great idea.  GET AN EXCEPTION IN WRITING before you cross that bridge, because the very worst imaginable outcome is to have your HG+ kiddo repeating classes that were too easy the FIRST time around. (eek) We had to accelerate DD more than we'd have liked (a third year), and it still took about a month and much back-and-forth between our local school administration and the state department of education in order for my DD to take all high school coursework without being assigned a GRADUATION COHORT YEAR (apparently just a class or two each year isn't a problem-- but NOT taking elementary/middle school coursework while not yet a high school student IS). Just warning you that they were probably right to advise you of the road ahead. Be thinking about how comfortable you are with formal accelerations to get the placement and grade-level in synch-- or closer to it, anyway. Our state DoEd was okay with a ONE year split, but nothing more than that, and even so, the school still had to do some fancy footwork about it.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Dec 2012
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Glad the meeting went well. The credit thing seems to be a US thing - actually the graduating high school is a US thing I think.
Last edited by puffin; 10/28/13 11:27 PM.
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