Close Encounters of the Public School Kind

A few weeks ago one of our neighbors held a political meet-and-greet for an incumbent state senator. I hadn't met the candidate before and didn't realize until the event that he is apparently "the" guy in the state senate who knows education. The other guests at the party were very much education people (and neighbors and friends of the host, of course).

At one point I wandered into a conversation between the hostess, a man wearing a school district polo, and another guest about why it didn't make sense for the school district to convert to K-8 schools. Since I'd arrived late (Vivian was sick; and it took until 7:30 that night to get Tristan to go to sleep) I didn't know how the school district man was.

Later, after some speechifying by the incumbent senator and a few supporters, I found myself next to the school district man and asked where he worked within the district.  Turned out he was the superintendent of schools.  Foot in mouth a bit, me? But the coincidence was lovely and I took the opportunity to describe Vivian and ask his advice. I mentioned I'd been looking at private elementaries, even though realistically, there's no way we can afford to send Vivian to any of them unless buckets of financial aid fall into our laps somehow. He suggested calling the director of gifted programs (that wasn't her title, exactly--I've forgotten the title and will have to Google her).

I'm not sure what good that will do me, but I do plan to talk to this person.  I'm not sure if it'll do any good because I'm not sure how much the public school can really do for Vivian. Realistically, public school classrooms can only be so flexible. Public school is understaffed (particularly now; though I think it will be worse still in a year or two when Vivian is actually old enough to go). Teachers work full time jobs--more than full time sometimes during the school year--and they have lots of students to look out for. In our school district, gifted programming starts in the first grade, but you still have to get through Kindergarten somehow. A year from now Vivian could easily be reading on the 4th grade level, and I doubt the public school can actually send from kindergarten each day to do 4th grade reading. Nor can they necessarily provide appropriate materials within the classroom. And then there are her math skills, which are on a wholey different level.

Still. Maybe I'm wrong. I can hope, right?