Reddit mentions: The best parent participation in education books

So, basically, you're thinking of buying and are vaguely thinking about having kids in X years?

My advice would be to rent. You're at least 5 years away from dealing with schools, and while being proactive is nice, the city has a good way of screwing with you. For example, we found a reasonable place to be zoned for a good school, but then, just before the boy was to start Kindergarten, the Board of Ed rezoned our building to, let's say, a school with a poor track record. We're renters, so we moved, but I imagine the angst of those people who owned (particularly since, additionally to their kids not going to the school they had been set on, their property values would have taken a hit from the rezoning).

More generally, you have no idea what your kid will be like if you don't even have kids yet. You might have a special needs requirement. You might have a really bright kid that will go to a G&T. You may get into a really good private school but now face a stupid commute to get your kid there at 8AM before you head to work. Any sort of thing, which will put whatever preconceived plans into crisis. And the kid you have in Kindergarten will grow and develop and will not be the same kid by 3rd grade, and you may no longer be in an ideal school.

So, if it's the case where you're thinking of buying, I would think long and hard about it. There's a real value in flexibility and not being tied down to a property.

That said, Alina Adams's book is a pretty good primer on the early elementary school options and what you can think about.

I suggest you hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Your son seems a lot like my daughter. We were thrown off by the "repetitive/restricted" behaviour thing, too. We can take her anywhere, she'll eat just about anything and we don't have to stick to a routine at all. Whatever happens, it seems to me like you'll qualify for some kind of EA.

You're already in the EA process, so that will rumble on. You could try getting Negotiating The Special Education Maze from the library. You could also look into local special-ed schools--many of them have attached support groups. We found that invaluable. Good luck!

[Parents and Families of Children with Disabilities: Effective School-Based Support Services]
(http://www.amazon.com/Parents-Families-Children-Disabilities-School-Based/dp/0130194883/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332931362&sr=1-2&tag=bookforyoums-20)

I buy secular (never religious) curriculum that was designed for homeschoolers or teachers to teach from (usually written by teachers) and I also enroll him in online courses on outschool.com that are done by teachers for subjects that I'm not comfortable teaching. For math, we used Math Mammoth for a long time and just switched to Teaching Textbooks. My son is taking Japanese which isn't offered in any public school where we've lived. This is an example of a class he already finished this year and more info about the teacher

ETA: When he was little we used workbooks, stuff from teacherspayteachers.com, and time4learning.com and I used Worldbook's Typical Course of Study to see what he needed to learn each year as well. I also used the "What Your X Grader Needs To Know" series and fleshed things out from there. There are so many options though. Build Your Library is a good one too, we're using that this year and next year for history/lang arts.

This might be a good read.

I know how school works, I did go to school. Aside from the fact that the three-tier system still exists in many areas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-tier_education / http://www.middleschools.org.uk/) people still do refer to tween years as middle-school years: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Middle-School-Years-Achieving-Education/dp/0446675628 / http://www.liverpoolcollege.org.uk/component/categoryblock/middle-curriculum?Itemid=215 /

Now go back to talking nonsense about economics.