I see I ended up as OP of a split off thread.
The primary issue (as an offshoot of the other thread)
https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/should-you-take-3-years-of-english-in-high-school-if-accelerated-9th-grade-english-taken-in-8th-grade
is the situation of taking a “gap year” in a core subject during grades 9-12, if High School level courses were taken earlier, and the student will end up with (more than) enough HS level courses in each subject. Since our two oldest children are both in this exact same, quite specific, scenario (S24 no math in grade 9, D27 no English in grade 9), I thought it best to join the ongoing discussion on the topic, rather than starting a duplicate thread, especially since mods could have merged the duplicate thread into the ongoing discussion (the reverse of what has happened). Either way is fine. I’m learning from the two threads.
With regard to what I said on the secondary issue about HS level courses taken before grade 9, (that had already been raised by several posters in the precursor thread before I even got there), note I said “Perhaps different states/regions do things differently”, so I was not making an assertion about what happens globally, just locally. But I did want to make a counterpoint to claims that that such courses would/should not count and were “fluff”.