kato

Uh, no. There's §311b 1. (2) BGB, and that's been around for decades.  

  You will get a letter stating the offer to pay a Strafbefehl with a date, usually two weeks, during which you can protest it. About four to six weeks later you will get the fine itself. You can then apply for paying the fine in installments, under full disclosure of income and living costs; otherwise the fine has to paid immediately. Should you choose not to pay you'll have to do a couple weeks in jail as replacement.

That's not a recent development, parents have been complaining about "zu hoher Erwartungshorizont" for their precious kids for decades. What's new about it is the completely worthless and meaningless online petitions that are the hip thing right now.   Last one in Baden-Württemberg was for the 2018 English Abitur. 29,000 signatures. Response from the ministry as the sole decisive authority: "no".

  EI won't take him, plain and simple. They might have a look, but well, no. They have more than enough applications. HC could be an option if OP plans to move again within a few years to a place where his next school doesn't know their reputation.   HPC/F+U... uhm, their general gymnasium has been around for 3 years. And i'm not quite sure they have an educational concept given that in those 3 years they seem to have added on new programmes every year (most recently, this school year: an "IB prep class" for non-German speaking kids aged 14-16). I'm also not quite sure the staff on the photos on their website is still there, but that's a common problem with F+U in general.   I think we have or used to have someone on the forum that had kids in HPC's Realschule?     OP might also be mistaken about private schools being "less stressful". 40% of all secondary-level schoolkids in Heidelberg go to private schools. Most of them are educationally - and by size too - fully on par with the state schools.   There are only four private schools around Heidelberg - with staatliche Anerkennung - that by their advertisements and reputation place themselves into a "kids that didn't/wouldn't make it at Gymnasium" portfolio for parents with money. OP named two of them with Heidelberg College and HPC; the other two are the Waldorf school (where the not reading German part might not be as much of a problem) and Kurpfalzinternat in Bammental (mandatory boarding, twice the price of HIS).