With no state mandate, Ohio’s gifted children may see services cut

June 4, 2011, Port Clinton News Herald

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Rayne Wilson hid behind his mom on the couch, scared to talk to the company in the room.

His younger brother explained a computer game where players build a world around four basic elements. It requires math. It requires logic.

“I only made it to Level 2,” 6-year-old Brayson said.

The urge to brag finally was enough to break his silence.

“I made it to Level 11,” Rayne said.

When it comes to anything numerical or measurable, Rayne is brilliant. At age 7, he knows the full multiplication table. Give him a date two years out, he’ll tell you what day of the week it falls on — even accounting for the leap year. One day he visited his brother’s karate studio. His mother saved the map of the room that he drew from memory — done to scale.

Rayne is fortunate. Next year, a gifted specialist at Bucyrus Elementary School will work with him and his teachers to accommodate his skills. He’ll be in second grade, but move up to a third-grade math class.

Across the state, however, budget-crunched school districts are cutting their gifted staff, and the proposed state budget could eliminate dedicated gifted students.