more questions about schooling in Hamburg

Background: we will live in Hamburg for 1 year, starting in July (we are university professors on sabbatical). My daughter will be in 6th grade. She has been studying German and will have very basic German when we arrive. We are on the waiting list at Phorms (our ideal option), but there's no guarantee. We have heard from the secretaries or staff several different schools (Helene Lange, Brecht Schule, a Catholic school) that our daughter would need to be "fluent" in German and that they offer no language support.

The secretary from Brecht told us that we need to to go the school authority Hamburg first and that they will place her in a school they deem appropriate. The school authority told us that immigrants typically get placed in German classes for a year before going to a regular school. This will NOT work in our case. We are not typical immigrants who plan to be in Germany long term; we will only be there for a year. Also, my daughter is in gifted education in the USA. We would just like her to be treated like a guest student.

Basically, we are feeling like every school is shutting the door in our face and giving us the runaround. Friends here (who have lived in Germany) as well as German friends have told us that the schools system HAS to accept her. If that is the case, why is everyone (except Phorms) telling us she has to be fluent? (In the USA this would be illegal, so it's rather shocking and frustrating.)

For those of you who have kids in the school system, can you please give advice? Did the school authority place your child in a German language class before they ever got to go to a regular school? If not, how did you get around this?

How do we get our daughter into a regular school instead of getting put into a German prep program? I can't imagine we are the first non-German speaking expat family to experience this!