Do parents always get to decide what grade their kids are in?

[Wildflower]

Hi! We are pretty unschooling-ish, but last year I enrolled in a very casual charter school for dd, kindergarten, becasue I liked the support person, and we recieved free materials.

DD turns 6 in late August, and though she is academically at a first grade level, it seems to me like she is younger than lots of of first graders, and I'm thinking why not just have her be in Kindergarten officially again this year, firstly because as unschoolers we don't pay any attend to grade level at all in what we do, so who cares, but secondly because if she were ever to want to attend high school a decade down the road, I'd rather she be on the older more mature spectrum of her peers to help her cope with that high school experience. Also, if we were to stay in the charter school which is helpful to us financially, come second grade I'll have to start bumming out the charter officials by refusing to have dd tested, so another year of offical "k" would hold that at bay longer.

But are parents the ones who get to decide what grade thier child is in in California, or if they want their child to "repeat" a grade for non-academic reasons? Or is it a huge institutional hassle...?

Thanks for any wisdom!!!

[lilyka]

jere you are restricted by what grades you can put them in. They can start kindergarten if they turn five on or before Aug. 1. or they can waittill the next year. more and more people are waiting (almost everyone) and because of that some are starting to wait an additional year untill their children are darn near seven. So if I were to put my children in public school they would calculate what year they could have started kindergarten and what grade that would put them in. I could enroll them in that grade or the one below it. but couldn't advance them past where they would be according to the minimum start date.

So Lily could have started kindergarten in 2005 in which case she would be going into 2nd grade in fall. but we would have waited and enrolled her in 2006 which would make her a 1st grader this fall.

so when enrolling in public school we have a little say. but not much,. when I turn in my paper work I can put her in whatever grade i want. the only time It would raise eyebrows is if we were skipping the testing grades.