The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  Over the past twenty years, several organizations have sprung up across the country to help guide minority students and their parents through every step of the process, from filling out the application and the often daunting financial aid forms to helping with acculturation once a child is accepted. Among the cities served by such organizations as A Better Chance, Early Steps, Prep for Prep, and the Independent School Alliance for Minority Affairs are New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

  “Since its inception in 1984, the Alliance has placed nearly two thousand kids in private schools,” says Manasa Tangalin, executive director of the Alliance for Minority Affairs.

  Ms. Tangalin explained that the Alliance serves as both a recruiting institution and a support system. Applicants pay a flat forty-five-dollar fee for a common application that is sent to as many of the forty member schools as an applicant chooses. Alliance workers also help applicants arrange for interviews at the schools and advise them which private schools seem like an appropriate match. Once they are accepted, the results are astounding: one hundred percent of graduating seniors from the Alliance have gone on to college. And the list of colleges that accepted these students is impressive: more than a hundred kids have attended such elite colleges as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, Amherst, Duke, Georgetown, Rice, and the University of Chicago. Would a hundred percent of those students have gone on to college if they had stayed in public school?

  Manasa Tangalin says no.

  Some concerned citizens are attacking the issue of racial imbalance in private schools with a radical, innovative approach. The article “A Private School Tackles the Racial Gap,” published in the New York Times on November 24, 2005, describes how donors connected to St. George’s, a private elementary school located in a wealthy Memphis suburb, presented school officials $6 million to create a sister school in the city, eight miles away. The experiment began in 1999 in a renovated church with the creation of St. George’s Memphis. By September 2005, St. George’s Memphis had enrolled nearly a hundred children from pre-kindergarten through second grade, with the expectation of adding a grade a year, stopping at fifth grade. Most of the children come from black and Hispanic working-class families. Parents must pay a minimum of $500 a year, with the rest subsidized by scholarships. The first year the new director of admissions recruited children by knocking on doors in the neighborhood. Six years later, there are more applicants than openings.

  With the goal of narrowing the achievement gap academically and bridging social differences, both schools share the same lesson plans and some of the same teachers and join each other for field trips, community service projects, and social events. In 2009, the first fifth grade class from St. George’s Memphis will combine with its sister school in the suburbs to form an integrated sixth grade in a new middle school.

  Early indications suggest that the experiment is working. Tests given to second graders showed that all but two of the twenty children at St. George’s Memphis were reading more than a half year above grade level, only slightly less than their suburban counterparts who were reading just above third grade level. School officials believe that by fifth grade, test scores will indicate virtually no difference between the two schools. Perhaps with an eye on Memphis, private schools in Cincinnati and Philadelphia have begun similar experiments.

  Then there is the opposite extreme: private schools that resist the issue of diversity altogether. New York mom Shea Cohen recalled a panel discussion held at her preschool one evening in May.

  “It was made up of parents whose kids go to the various schools in Manhattan. They would describe the schools and you could ask questions. I started getting more of a feel for the different schools that night. What we liked, what turned us off.”

  Shea smiled her Drew Barrymore upward tilt.

  “So we’re at this meeting.” She covered her mouth with her fist. “This is unbelievable. There is a school called Hurst Academy. It’s incredibly WASPy. Every little boy is blond and every mother is blonde and wispy and willowy, like Buffy. This mom in our class, an African-American woman, asks, ‘How much diversity is there at your school?’ And the Hurst Academy woman goes, ‘None. We have no diversity. Zero. Sorry. It is what it is.’ There was a gasp, followed by dead silence in the room, but the woman was so honest, it was both shocking and actually hysterical. So that was easy. Cross Hurst off our list.”

  Finally, regrettably, I encountered more than one school official whose attitude toward ethnic diversity approached the purely promotional. I asked Nan F., director of admissions at Darcy, one of the most exclusive private schools in the city, “When it comes to diversity, do you look for anything in particular?”

  “Well.” She paused, peeked at my tape recorder, shrugged. “We took these African-American twins last year who were . . . actually, who cares what they were . . . they were gorgeous. You thought, ‘Brochure! Front of the brochure!’”

  “Is that why you took them?”

  Nan fixed me with a crooked, bemused smile. “Honey, everybody took them.”

  Nametag Recognition

  The first week in May, on a brilliantly clear and unseasonably warm Thursday evening, Pemberley School hosts the first of its half-dozen open houses and parent tours. Pemberley is located on a hill above the city, lording over one of its most expensive and exclusive neighborhoods. The school’s entrance is hidden from the main road, up a winding gravel drive through a mini-forest until, incongruously, two towering iron gates emerge and block your way. The only indication that you have arrived at Pemberley is the metal call box emblazoned with a crimson red crest and cursive P in its center.

  Katie Miller, at the wheel of her SUV, and her friend Trina D’Angelo, riding shotgun, pull up behind a BMW convertible and wait their turn to enter the Pemberley grounds. They have driven past the gravel entry road twice, but, heeding the word on the street that finding Pemberley is every prospective parent’s first challenge, they factored in extra time to get lost. Idling at the gate, they are twenty minutes early, a perfect cushion time-wise to scope out the school and the scene.

  Trina nods at the BMW. “Nice ride.”

  “You’ll be seeing a lot of nice rides up here,” Katie says.

  “That’s what you hear.”

  Trina sniffs, pulls down the passenger-side visor, and peers at herself in the mirror on the flap. By reflex, she begins to apply a fresh coat of lipstick. Katie shakes her head.

  “What?” Trina says. “I’m at Pemberley. I must beautify.”

  “Please,” Katie says.

  They are jolted by the medieval moan of the gates opening. The BMW drives through, then the gates jerk closed. Katie pulls forward and announces their names into the call box. After a moment, a metallic genderless voice echoes into their car, “Welcome to Pemberley,” and the gates grind open.

  Katie follows the taillights of the Beemer past a wide, steep set of stairs leading up to the Pemberley campus and into a concrete parking structure. Katie’s SUV is fifth in line, behind the BMW, a black Mercedes 600SL, a forest green Jaguar, and a Mercedes SUV.

  “It’s official,” Trina says. “We have the worst car here.”

  “By far,” says Katie.

  “If the parking lot is any indication, these are not my people.”

  “You can’t hate the school because of the cars in the parking lot,” Katie says.

  “Yes I can. And I do. I’m not applying here. Let’s go home.”

  “Shut up. I want to see it.”

  “Why? You want Alex to do four hours of homework a night in kindergarten? This is not your school. Your school is Hunsford.”

  “And your school is?”

  Trina shrugs. “Still looking. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Katie drums her fingertips on the steering wheel. “You have nothing to worry about. You’ll get in everywhere.”

  “You talking about the D card, girl? You bet I’ll be waving it.”
r />   “Ah, to be young, single, and Mexican.”

  “Half,” corrects Trina. “But it’s enough. Hopefully.”

  “Christ. How long does it take Beemer Boy to park?”

  The BMW slithers into a narrow spot between a wall and yet another Mercedes. Katie’s SUV inches forward.

  “Pay dirt,” Trina says. She points to an opening next to a silver Lexus.

  “Probably the janitor’s car,” Katie says.

  “I’m not gonna like this place,” Trina says.

  “At least you have a positive attitude,” Katie says.

  Trina D’Angelo, born Katrina Manuela Jimenez, has café mocha skin, high, sculpted cheekbones, a model’s height, an athlete’s build, and a DJ’s voice. Her eyes are bullet brown and penetrating, her laugh booming and intimidating. Married briefly to a drummer in a grunge band, Trina bolted when her living room started to look and smell like the bowl of an oversized hash pipe. She left the marriage feeling nauseous, which she attributed to the sickness of the union itself. Two weeks later, she discovered that her nausea was actually due to morning sickness. She called her husband with the news and offered to reconcile for the sake of their unborn child. He acknowledged her pregnancy with a drunken grunt and reacted to her suggestion that they get back together by hanging up the phone.

  That was five years ago. Today, to Trina’s surprise, her ex plays a part in Pascal’s life—granted, a small part, but it seems to be enough for their son. It’s certainly more than enough for Trina. The ex calls Pascal on weekends and holidays, occasionally pops in for a visit, and even more occasionally mails Trina a support check. Not exactly the perfect father, Trina admits, but better than some. In any case, she and Pascal are doing fine without him or any other man. Trina takes some credit for her ex’s turnaround. Heeding her advice, a year ago he ditched the band and partnered into a national muffler and brake franchise in Philadelphia. The ex seems, if not entirely happy, relatively coherent.

  Trina was born in Mexico City to a Mexican barber and a Caucasian medical student, a liaison that Trina never understood. Her parents did manage to stay married for six years, five and a half of them in New Jersey where her mother gave up studying medicine and her father gave up her mother. Living in Mexico for a grand total of six months scarcely qualifies Trina as Mexican, but it is technically true. As her best friend Katie Miller says, “Trina, you’re as white as I am.”

  “Whiter,” corrects Trina. “But when it comes to getting into kindergarten, yo am Mexican.”

  “Yo don’t even speak Spanish.”

  “Not true. Oh, Pascal, honey! Mamacita’s right here! Where is my niño?”

  Katie just laughs. In truth, it has been a struggle for Trina. Her finances are tight. She works as a caterer out of her home, a spotty career at best, though it seems to be picking up. Late at night, after Pascal is asleep, Trina tinkers at a portable keyboard and dreams of becoming a singer-songwriter like her idol, Lucinda Williams.

  “I have so many songs in my head,” Trina says. “Someday I’m going to write a song about this whole crazy kindergarten application process. I bet that would sell.”

  The Pemberley School campus lies nestled in what appears to be an arboretum, wide as Central Park, green as a golf course. The school’s vine-covered stone buildings—administration, classrooms, and library to the right; auditorium, gymnasium, art room, and science lab on the left—horseshoe around acres of a lush lawn large enough for a soccer match. You might compare Pemberley to a smaller version of Oxford University.

  Slightly out of breath, Katie and Trina complete their ascent up the thirty-seven concrete steps from the Pemberley School parking structure onto the school’s grounds. They stop, riveted, taking in the scene before them: three hundred prospective parents munching hors d’oeuvres, conspiring in hushed tones, sharing information and anxiety, laughing ner-vously. These parents are dressed to the hilt, men and women in black suits and cocktail dresses, seriously moneyed, card-carrying members of the ruling class, distinguishable only by paper nametags with squiggly blue borders pressed close to their hearts.

  “This is, wow,” says Katie.

  “Holy shit,” says Trina.

  “Hi!”

  A baby-faced African-American boy wearing a red Pemberley blazer and short blue pants extends a puffy hand toward Katie and Trina.

  “Welcome to Pemberley. I’m Simon. Please sign in over there at table number three, fill out a nametag, and enjoy some refreshments before you go into the information session, which will be in about fifteen minutes. And if you have any questions about Pemberley, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ve been here for five years.”

  Trina bends down to him. “Hey, Simon, how old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “You like this place?”

  “Oh yes. I love going to school here.”

  “What do you like about it?” Katie asks.

  “Hm. Let’s see. Well.” Simon presses a finger to his mouth. “I guess I like everything. I like the kids and the teachers. Yeah. I like everything.”

  “What don’t you like about it?” Trina asks.

  “Hmm.” Finger again to his lip. “I wish school started later. And it was only four days a week. I like to sleep in sometimes and do nothing all day except play video games.”

  “That’s interesting,” Trina says, and Simon beams.

  “Well, thanks,” Katie says.

  “See you around,” Trina says.

  “Do you need help finding the sign-up table?”

  “Nope. We got it,” Trina says.

  “Welcome to Pemberley,” Simon says as he greets a couple dressed in matching black gabardine suits despite the warm evening. Katie and Trina move toward the center of the courtyard.

  “Look at these people,” Trina says. “I feel like I’m in Stepford.”

  “Ask yourself. Can you see Pascal running around, playing soccer on that field?”

  “Actually,” Trina says, “I can.”

  Moments later, officially signed in, nametags slapped on, hands balancing plastic plates punctuated with fresh fruit, Wheat Thins, and slices of aged sharp cheddar, Katie and Trina stand on the periphery of the courtyard observing the swirl of humanity ten feet away.

  “These people seem so, I don’t know, desperate,” says Katie.

  “Yeah, but the fruit is incredible,” Trina says. “And this cheese is killer.”

  “You never had cheese before? You have cheese every time you come to my house.”

  “Not like this cheese. This is Pemberley cheese.”

  Katie scans a cluster of parents to her right, then glances at another group next to them. “Unbelievable. Everybody’s staring at each other’s nametags. They’re trying to see if someone more important than they are is trying to get their kid in.”

  “I know. It’s disgusting,” Trina says. “Did you see whatshername over there?”

  “Who?”

  “The TV weather lady.”

  Katie cranes her neck at Trina. “You’re looking at nametags too.”

  Trina shrugs and pops a slice of kiwi into her mouth. “I heard that her kid is totally off-the-wall and obnoxious, unlike Pascal, who is intelligent, athletic, charming, and, have I mentioned, Mexican?”

  Katie rolls her eyes. “You are such a nut job. Why am I friends with you?”

  Trina lays her plate down on one of the six food stations, picks up a napkin and presses it lightly to her mouth. Then she slips her arm into Katie’s and pulls her toward the Pemberley School auditorium.

  “Come on, honey, let me show you around Pascal’s new school.”

  The auditorium at Pemberley rakes upward at a sharp angle, providing a perfect sight line from every seat. The seats themselves are made of cushy maroon velvet, and the rows are wide enough for a six-footer to stretch out in. The sound system, newly installed a year ago, is voice-activated, adjusted automatically for clarity rather than volume. A dozen lighting instruments hang suspended from a ceiling grid
like a swarm of black metal moths.

  Dana Optt stands in the funnel of the auditorium, in front of the stage, bathed in soft blue light. She wears a sky blue suit in perfect balance with her background. She raises her hand and the three hundred prospective parents seated before her instantly silence themselves.

  Dana ducks her head in response, an awkward, almost shy gesture, her exquisite white coif waving slightly. After eleven years as director of admissions at Pemberley, she still can’t get used to the deference a crowd like this showers on her. She knows also that this deference is short-term, lasting for only a few intense months, and that she is viewed most often as both a messenger of hope and the deliverer of heartbreak.

  For Dana, the best part of her job is being around children. “I love the kids,” she says. “Why else would you work in a school? In fact, the one bad part of my job is that it’s very isolating. So I go out of my way to find time to hang out with the kids. I eat lunch with them. I do carpool. Yeah, I’m crazy about the kids.”

  Dana takes one step to the side, and behind her on a screen covering the entire back wall, faces of children appear in the blue light: a six-year-old African-American girl wearing braces; an eleven-year-old Asian boy laughing hysterically, his arms spread around two classmates; a white girl missing two front teeth; and a lanky Hispanic student wearing Pemberley red. The PowerPoint presentation continues with a barrage of laughing, happy children of all colors, races, and creeds. Underscoring the photos, soft rock sells the happiness even harder. The presentation ends with two children pointing right at the audience, one black, one white, two fingers up on each of their little hands, waving the peace sign.