Thank you for visiting St. Johns Gifted. Please read our About page to understand the purpose of the site. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Lynn O’Connor, Gifted and Secondary Science Program Specialist with St. Johns County School District, was kind enough to respond to our request for an interview. If you’d like more information, please leave a comment below and we’ll ask Ms. O’Connor to respond, or if you’d prefer to keep your question private you can contact her through the link above.

The questions below are taken from direct inquiries we’ve received through this website, as well as traffic from search engines (Tip: Webmasters can see the phrases searched that resulted in traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc.). Additionally, these were the same questions we asked when we first moved to the area and were researching gifted education options in St. Johns County.

Currently, what is the criteria for a student to be identified as gifted and receive gifted services in St. Johns County?

We follow the state requirements of an intelligence score of two standard deviations above the norm (130), need for the program, and the majority of characteristics on a gifted check list.

What instructional options exist for gifted-identified children at the elementary, middle, and high-school levels in St. Johns County?

The services we provide are consult, resource and full time. Consult is available K-12, resource K-8, and full time 2-5 (depending on enrollment numbers). The middle school resource is for three core academic classes, language arts, science, and social studies.

Which programs at the middle and high-school levels accept high-performing students that may not necessarily be formally identified as gifted?

The best source for that information is the course directory which can be found at the St. Johns County web site. The options are too numerous for me to list.

• St. Johns County School District - Middle School Course Catalog
• St. Johns County School District - High School Course Catalog

What percentage of children receive full-time gifted instruction at the designated schools?

The numbers vary widely from school to school but the county average is 3.4%.

If parents do not want to move their child from their zoned school, what instructional options are available to the child?

All schools offer consult services. All other services are offered at cluster sites except South Woods Elementary and Mill Creek which have resource.

Posted: 11|19|07 at 3:27 pm. Filed under: Gifted Program Interviews. New here? Follow this entry via RSS 2.0. Comment | Trackback