More school-choosing drama

It's so ridiculous I can almost laugh about it now and assume it won't happen...but I'll have to be vigilant to make sure.

I called the public school today, our home school that doesn't have room for Ryan this semester. * (explanation below). I need to register him there for next school year as one of our options; registration happens next month. I wanted to clarify a few things, one of them being their statement on their website that to enter 1st grade, a child needed to have completed an accredited Kdg program. So I asked her what we would do if Ryan isn't able to complete the school year at StMM, since we really don't have any other suitable school options for this semester. She told me that they would START HIM BACK IN KINDERGARTEN!!! And after awhile they would start moving him up, subject by subject as he showed mastery in them. Ummm...I can think of few things that he needs less than going back through Kindergarten, starting out with one class and slowly moving to another. A child with adjustment problems does not need to be moved around that much in a short time. The constant change alone would cause him stress, let alone the tediousness of starting out having to go back over the basics (which from what I understand, the public school has to start out even more basic than StMM did.) We did talk about the assessment process, and I asked if that would have any weight in their decision whether to place Ryan in K or 1, and she hemmed and hawed about it, not very encouraging. Of course, she doesn't know Ryan and even though I've shared with her the independent assessment results, she didn't sound convinced that Ryan would go directly into 1st grade if he doesn't complete the year at StMM. Just another stressor for me.

For those who don't know Ryan, he is reading fairly fluently (more and more every day) and does very simple multiplication already. He's got the concept of addition and subtraction down (still has to think them through, but does so without help). He'd be bored out of his mind if he had to sit through reviewing colors, numbers, letters, etc that they do in the public school Kdg. They have to start there though, because they have kids who are still 4 when school starts....heck, Max and Lily could in theory start Kdg there in the fall.

* The public school situation here is this: we have a very large system, nearly 90 elementary schools. There are several "clusters" of schools, and every address in the county is assigned to one of the clusters, and within their cluster they have a "home" school. Their home school is where they register, but they aren't guaranteed placement at that school, just at a school within their cluster....although in reality, almost everyone who applies during the registration period will get placed at their home school if that is their first choice. However, any time after that registration period and some schools (or some grade levels in some schools) will be full, and so the child gets placed at another school in the cluster. So we *could* attend public school right now, but the closest school they could place us at is more than 12 miles away, a 25-30 minute drive each way (it's downtown, lots of traffic). It's just not a feasible option.