Meeting with T's Teacher

Trouble has come up in paradise. We had a meeting with T's teacher on Wednesday that we rescheduled because of a work conflict I had to Thursday. When we got there, there wasn't only T's teacher but all the teachers for the third grade, plus the principle and a teacher from the second grade. It was pretty intimidating. T's teacher was very nice however and translated for us. Basically they are worried that T is not learning German, and the German third grade curriculum (something about a special German style of handwriting, math problems, and so on), fast enough (he's only been there a few weeks) and that they are transferring him to second grade for the rest of the year. There were also some more problems like he is not allowed to ride his bike to school until in fourth grade and only after he passes a test--all of which is news to us. All the other teachers were there because they all have to meet together to change a student's grade assignment. They were polite, but I don't think it was handled very well. If anything they should have brought up concerns earlier so we could be working on them and given T some more time to adjust or have him go directly to second grade when he first arrived (they knew ahead of time he was coming and didn't speak German), but this is probably a new area for them as well and they are not used to kids coming in that don't already know the language and all. At least this will buy him some time to adjust and learn more of the language and German specific curriculum. We plan to essentially continue to home school T and M in English and American style curriculum in parallel to their work at the German school.