Was your gifted program just a class of high performing students or was it a group of people who scored 130+ on IQ tests?
Mine was the latter and we only had 7 ppl, while for some people (i guess) gifted was for people who did well in classes.
Which was yours?
The former. They picked the four top students from the five feeder schools. The 20 of us all tracked together for two years. We got a lot of privilege and bent rules, looking the other way for blatant infractions (weed).