Where was your friend looking? We had a kid who was musically talented. We were fortunate that our schools had awesome music programs, but we also looked ourselves outside of school. We had no difficulty finding quality programs for our kid.
There are tons of resources to tap into…community colleges, continuing education programs. The key is to find an area of interest for the kid. There has to be at least one…and then look for opportunities that mesh with that.
One of my kids was asked to play in the middle school ensembles as a 5th grader (our MS was grades 7 and 8). We declined the offer. After all…even though put kid was a fine musician, the kid was 11, not 13.