Moving to Palo Alto area - Any school advice?

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Hi all, my son is 9 and we're transferring to California from Texas.

if you have any input on good/bad school/things to consider, I'd be grateful to hear it.

Closest description is he is between high functioning autism and aspie. Hes intelligent and good with computers, but his speech is a few years behind his age (which frustratingly misleads people to interact with him at a 6 year old capability level. His speech may be 3 years behind, but ironically he reads at or above a typical 9 year old level.

Based onour history, my gut says the ideal would be a school with half day typical students and half day 1:1 aba. However i dont know if that even exists.

Any feedback appreciated -
Sweet

Wait a second. I had to edit cause I misread your son as being a preschooler.

That area is my favorite place in the world, just thinking of it makes me so happy. I hope you find it magical! And find the resources you're looking for in a school for your son. Sorry, no help from me.

You can do some research here http://www.greatschools.org/california/palo-alto/ although some cautions are warranted. Schools can change fast and different parents can not only value different things, but have very different experiences at the same school. Still, it was a parent posting that gave me a first heads up my son could have issues at his Midldle School, even though we sent him there anyway.

Palo Alto has a huge AS cluster so hopefully you'll be in good hands no matter where you go but, still, it is good you are asking around. We've had the best experience at an underrated elementary school (not in Palo Alto) and I honestly think we couldn't have had that in a school testing and ranking higher, so you really don't know without hearing a LOT of personal stories.

The district is on the web, so do check out their official pages, too.

I believe it includes one school on the wrong side of the freeway (literally and figuratively) and if that would be your school you'll want to dig. A bad neighborhood can mean a difficult experience all around .. Or it can mean you have extra special teachers who try 5 times harder.

I'm sorry I don't have any advice to offer in particular regarding the type of schooling you are looking for, but I am from the area and just wanted to say welcome As you can see if you spend enough time looking around the site there are quite a few people from here in the Bay Area / Silicon Valley, I like to think of it as more AS friendly than most places.

An interesting and somewhat well known article on the phenomenon
*** Click here for Wired's Article on AS and California's Silicon Valley ***

And once again welcome

Wow, great to have such fast and helpful replies (even the welcomes are helpful :)). i have been lurking a bit before posting and love the site so far.

We are a bit worried reading about how budget cuts in CA are supposedly impacting so many students.

On the otherhand it is encouraging to think of the "cluster" you mention, in that usually the more common you are the easier it is to integrate into a community. Just being Irish in the US made it difficult to integrate a while back (remember the movie gangs of new york?). Hopefully in the future AS people integrating with others will be just as trivial as it is today for someone Irish. (i can dream, right? :))