Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Potential School?

In considering another school for my DS9, I having been speaking to the admissions person. I had some specific question about academics and being challenged. She said if you are accepted you can get into more specifics then. Acceptance means my son has to go there and take the SCAT test and have a trial day to see about a good fit. It seems like someone would be able to speak about this information before my DS came to visit. Any thoughts on how to get around this?

I spoke to a few parents from this potential school. They are both very please. One parent seemed to imply her daughter was gifted and they give her more work when she is done with her school work. I wonder if they just load her up with work to keep her busy or if it's appropriate work. Another parent said when her daughter shadowed at our school and found they were doing work like this 2 years earlier. If I were to make a change how do I know it will be better for my gifted child?

This potential school would be 20 minutes out of our area. I happen to know of 3 families in our town going there. I don't know any of them very well.

Any suggestion for learning what makes a good fit.

The private school my son goes to really courted us and bent over backwards to answer my questions (in striking contrast to our public school, which clearly wanted us to just go away), so this seems odd to me, but how specific were your questions? I guess if you were asking specifically how they would accommodate your son, I can see why they might be hesitant to promise anything without first assessing him.

Do they have an open house you can attend? That was a good way for us to meet and talk to the director of the school and the actual teachers our son would have. It was far more useful than talking to the admissions person alone.

Open house is definitely an opportunity to talk to someone besides the person manning the phones. Perhaps when you call back you can plead your case: Perhaps you ask the question again and if you get the same answer you could argue how you have no problems going through their process but just want to know some basics so you are not wasting anyone's time. Basically, you want to know if it 'might' be a good fit.

Thank you for your ideas. I will try an open house.