The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  She taps her bottom lip with her index finger.

  “And, okay, there is that element of Kate Spade versus Prada. There is always the kid who has one cashmere sweater who is trying desperately to be accepted into a circle of kids who each have forty cashmere sweaters. There is that.”

  Elizabeth Marx tilts her head again. “Did I answer your question?”

  “Yes,” Katie says. “Yes, you did.”

  Elizabeth uncrosses her legs, slaps the folder against her chair, and stands. “Unfortunately, I have to wrap it up.”

  Katie glances at her watch. The interview has taken forty-three minutes.

  As Katie and Miles walk across the Meryton soccer field on the way to the parking lot, Katie whips off her scarf and jams it into her purse.

  “That was what,” Miles says, “a seven out of ten?”

  “Yeah. Maybe,” Katie says. They walk silently for a few seconds. “You were good, though. I was really impressed.”

  “Thanks. So were you.”

  “We’re a good team.”

  She reaches over, takes his hand. Clasps it between both of hers.

  “It’s a long shot,” he says.

  “The longest shot. Our only chance is if the pool this year is full of really lousy rich famous people. If that happens and they have to go into the pool of regular people, then we have a chance.”

  “Could we have done anything differently in there?”

  “Nah. And the more I think about her Kate Spade/Prada remark, the more disgusted I get.”

  They arrive at the parking lot. They stop, prepared to separate for the day. Katie gives Miles a coy smile.

  “So, I guess, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t have mattered if you wore a T-shirt.”

  She squeezes his hand and kisses him good-bye.

  Very Strong Candidates

  The night before the Hunsford interview, Katie insists that Miles look over the application. He takes the extra copy Katie made, sits up in bed with it, and begins to read it over. As he scans the first page, he says, “I think you’re way over the top about this process.”

  “You call it over the top, I call it being thorough,” Katie says from inside the closet. In a moment she appears wearing tan pants and her black cashmere sweater. “This is what I’m wearing tomorrow. You approve?”

  Miles peeks over the top of the application. “You can’t wear tan pants tomorrow. I’m wearing tan pants. We can’t wear the same color pants.”

  Katie puts her hands on her hips and stares at her husband. “Are you giving me fashion tips? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I was going to wear chinos.”

  “Not tomorrow you’re not.”

  “I can’t believe how you plan all this out.”

  “You know,” Katie says, “we’re not rich. I don’t have this overflowing closet full of stuff. I only have a few outfits. I don’t have a million things I can choose from.”

  “Fine,” Miles says. “I’ll wear something else.”

  “Not jeans, not a T-shirt, and not your dark wraparound sunglasses.”

  Miles shakes his head, continues reading the Hunsford application.

  “I wasn’t nervous, I was excited,” Katie says. “The minute we walked into Brianna’s office we felt very comfortable. Like we belonged there. I had good energy going the whole time.”

  Katie, Miles, and Brianna sit in chairs arranged in a semicircle. Brianna holds a manila folder on her lap. On top is another sheet. Katie can see a list of questions typed on it.

  “Tell me about Alex,” Brianna says. “Anything you think is important. I want you to talk about whatever you want. I have some questions”—she holds up the sheet for Katie and Miles to see—“and if I don’t get the answers I need, I’ll ask you.”

  “She is such a pleasure to talk to,” Katie says. “Nothing about this felt like an interview. As opposed to Meryton, where Elizabeth had this list of questions and she just went down her list, boom, boom, boom, thank you very much, good-bye. It was the opposite of that.”

  This time, Katie begins. She starts by describing Alex as a good friend, someone who likes to nurture other kids. Within thirty seconds, she shifts the conversation to Hunsford itself and why the school is so perfect for their family, far and away their number one choice. Brianna smiles and nods and writes something on the question sheet. Throughout the interview she takes notes, but the conversation is always loose and informal. The feeling that Katie gets from the moment they sit down in Brianna’s office is, We want you to feel comfortable. We’re not here to overwhelm you or frighten you. To Katie, “It’s a reflection of Hunsford as well.”

  Early on, Miles begins talking about his experience going to public schools. “There was no fostering of self-esteem at all,” he says. “One of the reasons we like Hunsford so much is that you put such emphasis on developing a child’s confidence. I had such a negative experience in high school especially, largely because I received no individual attention. I was uncomfortable speaking in front of the class and so forth. These are the things that Hunsford does. You help develop your students into good people.”

  Brianna nods. Smiles. Writes.

  The interview flows easily. About ten minutes in, Katie takes over. Echoing how she described Alex to Elizabeth at Meryton, she talks about Alex being advanced verbally and how that can be a challenge. “I forget that she’s four. I really do. I’ll get mad and I’ll say, ‘Why are you acting like you’re four?’ Then I stop myself and think, ‘Oh yeah. She is four.’”

  Brianna laughs, seems to relate to that story, writes enthusiastically on the sheet. Brianna asks about Alex’s relationship with her brother.

  “It’s basically very good,” Katie says.

  “Of course,” Miles says, “this morning she built a tower and he knocked it down. She wasn’t too happy about that.”

  “I wouldn’t like that either,” Brianna says.

  “They have the usual sibling stuff,” Katie says. “Related to that, Alex’s preschool teacher complimented her problem-solving skills during our parent-teacher conference last week. There’s this little boy at school who’s a bit younger than Alex. She had built a volcano and she was worried that he was gonna knock it down.”

  “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” Brianna says and laughs.

  “Exactly,” Katie says, joining her. “Why is it that little boys like to knock stuff down?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Miles says.

  “So Alex devised this game,” Katie says. “She was the mommy and he was the baby. He was all for it. He was so happy to be included in the game with her. Whenever it looked like he was gonna knock down her volcano, she would come up with an activity for him. She’d say, ‘You have to go over there and have a nap,’ or ‘It’s snack time. You have to have your snack now.’ That type of thing. She was pretty clever. He was able to play with her, she appeased him, it all worked out.”

  “Very good problem solving. Advanced. And she’s very flexible,” Brianna says, writing, smiling, and, in this case, underlining something.

  Brianna then asks about their involvement in Alex’s nursery school.

  “I’m very involved,” Katie says. “I’m cochair of the PTA, I’m a room parent, and I worked on the annual fund-raiser.”

  “Wow,” Brianna says. “Sounds like a lot.”

  “I’m happy to do it. It’s really not that big a deal. I like to be involved in our kids’ school.”

  The conversation motors along. Any semblance of a structured school interview peels away as they talk further about Katie’s involvement at Bright Stars, then about the extracurricular activities at Hunsford, their music program, drama, and dance. Katie asks about Spanish and PE, and after explaining these programs, Brianna asks if they have any questions.

  Katie asks what people love the most about Hunsford and what they like least. Brianna pauses, thinks. “I’d say that most of all, people love that we’re a community. We’re very tight. We’re a sch
ool, of course, but sometimes we forget that because of the community feel. As for what people complain about . . . you know, it’s individual things. And some people are just complainers by nature. I think because we are such a community, the complainers stick out. There is always going to be someone who isn’t happy. Nothing’s perfect.”

  Katie and Miles nod in unison.

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” Katie says, looking at Miles, who shrugs. “I don’t think so. We totally get it. The truth is, I’ve been here three times.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m not a weirdo or anything. I just love it.”

  And then Brianna beams.

  “What’s our next step?” Miles asks, grinning back.

  “What happens next is Alex comes for a visit. She hangs out, does a couple of activities, the kindergarten teachers observe her, and that’s it, and, well, let’s just be positive about this.”

  “Okay,” Katie says.

  “Oh, gee, I completely lost track of the time,” Brianna says. “We’d better stop.”

  They stand up, shake hands, and Katie offers what might be, she’ll admit, an overly exuberant, overloud thank-you. On the way out of Brianna’s office, Katie checks her watch.

  They have been with her for an hour and fifteen minutes.

  Driving home with Miles, Katie lets out a sigh and then a whoop.

  “That was great. Did you hear what she said at the end? Let’s assume it’s a yes.”

  “She didn’t exactly say that. She said let’s be positive.”

  “Okay. But look, we’re very strong candidates. We come from a nursery school that essentially feeds into Hunsford. We’re a good family and our kid is a star.”

  Miles says nothing.

  “I know,” Katie says. “Lots of families from our school don’t get in. I’m just hoping that we’re a family that looks right and feels right to them and that Alex wows them when they meet her.”

  Miles drives. Still says nothing. The silence is crushing her.

  “She was so nice,” Katie says. “Didn’t you think so, Miles? Didn’t you think it went well?”

  “I did,” Miles says. “I think it went really well.”

  “But?”

  “But,” Miles says, “you don’t know.”

  “Yeah. It’s true. You don’t. Jesus, this sucks.”

  “Are you going to write her a thank-you note?”

  Katie cracks a smile. “I already did.”

  Plan B

  The Evergreen School sits in the center of the city, swaddled in a small patch of green flanked by a grid of car dealerships, auto body shops, a vacuum cleaner repair shop, a Cuban restaurant, and an animal hospital. The school unfolds in a jumble of cottages, over which spans a concrete walkway leading to a former apartment building, now converted to classrooms. Evergreen feels like 1968 all over again, a place where the music of the Eagles might have been born, where hippies once ruled, where calm and consciousness triumph over test scores and the pressure associated with mountains of elementary school homework. The words murmured most often in these halls are process and holistic. The motto repeated constantly is “Give a child a fish, he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

  Unlike most other schools, Evergreen schedules the child visit before Connie R., director of admissions, or Edgar Mantle, head of the school, meets with the parents.

  “I actually think that’s smart,” Katie says. “They’ll meet Alex today and then a week later they’ll meet us. That way they can talk to us about her visit.”

  In the car on the way over, Katie plays down Alex’s play date at Evergreen, as she calls it. “We’re just gonna check it out. And afterwards we’ll talk, you and me, and you’ll tell me how it went, what you liked, you know?”

  Alex says, “Okay,” and looks out the window, past the grid of car dealerships that signals to Katie that they have arrived and that she should find a place to park. She squeezes the SUV into a space in front of an auto body shop, between two wrecked or abandoned cars.

  Not jumping up and down over Evergreen’s location, she thinks.

  On the Evergreen campus, ten prospective kindergartners and their moms meet in the school’s library, a large room that reminds Katie of a bed-and-breakfast where she and Miles once stayed in the Berkshires. Connie R. stands off to the side, listening to a prospective mom gush about the school. The mom wears a blue work shirt, jeans, and a buzz cut worthy of k.d. lang. Connie R. nods appreciatively and touches the mom on the shoulder in solidarity. For some reason, the gesture endears Connie to Katie. There is something so unpretentious about her and this school that makes her feel comfortable. Still, she has to admit that Evergreen is not her first choice. It feels less than the others somehow. There are fewer bells and whistles, not as much emphasis on academics, and the parents, both current and prospective, appear more laid-back. To Katie, this all adds up to being undeserving of the price tag the school commands, which is the same as every other private school in the city.

  Connie R. moves a few steps into the library and addresses the children in a soft, soothing voice. “Welcome, everyone. I’m so glad you could come. You’re going to have a very fun time today. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re all going to go to a classroom where there are some kids waiting for you. We’re going to go in together, you’re going to say good-bye to Mommy, and we’re going to have circle time. Okay? Let’s go.”

  As the parents file out of the library, Alex slips her hand into Katie’s.

  “This is going to be cool,” Katie says. “You’re going to do some fun things like you do at school, there’ll be some playtime, then you’ll have a snack—”

  “I don’t want to do circle time,” Alex says.

  Shit. Why does she hate circle time?

  “It’ll be fine,” Katie says, a plea, but she realizes that Alex has slowed her pace and they are now the last two people to approach the classroom. As Katie reaches the door, Alex pulls on her hand. She pokes her head inside the classroom, and, sure enough, there are a bunch of kids sitting on the rug in a circle. Alex’s eyes widen in what Katie knows is panic. Katie stands frozen in the doorway.

  What am I going to do? Okay. I have two choices. I can force her into the circle. She will not participate, she will cry, she will kick and scream. Or I can take her outside and talk to her. Either way, Connie will know she’s having a freak attack and we’re fucked.

  And then an angel appears.

  A teacher, young, stocky, hair in a bun, a smile that could sell used cars, is leaning over, her face close to Alex in a loving, sympathetic way.

  “Hi. My name is Chloe. What’s yours?”

  “Alex.”

  “Cool name. Hey, Alex, come on, I’m going to help you sit down next to a nice friend. Your special friend for today. She is way cool, too.”

  Chloe gently entwines her hand around Alex’s little fingers and they are gone, headed into the classroom, where Chloe deposits her onto the rug next to a little girl who grins toothlessly at Alex. Alex looks back at Katie and this time her look of panic has been supplanted by a grin of confidence: I can do this, Mom. I got this. I’m a big girl.

  Katie blows her a kiss and mouths, “Your snacks are in your pocket.”

  Alex half-nods. Now that she’s in the circle, you have to act like you belong. Gotta be cool. Her new friend grabs her hand, then lets it go as all the kids start to clap to a nursery rhyme led by Chloe, who has taken a chair at the top of the circle.

  Katie waits for ten seconds more, then moves back into the library. It’s empty for the moment, eerily so. Where have all those other parents gone? No Starbucks within walking distance that she saw.

  But Katie is prepared. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her knitting. She is working on a sweater. At least that’s her intention. If that doesn’t pan out, she’ll knit the two sleeves together, or what were supposed to be sleeves, and turn the thing into a blanket. Plan B.
Have to have a Plan B. The main thing for today, though, is to keep her hands busy and her mind distracted.

  After a while, a couple of the other moms walk in holding Starbucks containers—they must’ve driven—and sit down across from Katie. It feels as if they are all in a doctor’s waiting room or waiting for a repair to be done on their car. One of the moms asks Katie where else she’s looking and Katie mentions Meryton, adding a roll of her eyes, and Hunsford, trying to suppress her look of love. The other mom joins the conversation and within minutes they are sharing their fears and frustrations, their concerns and their nervousness. It’s instant bonding.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Katie says later. “I just feel very comfortable with the parents at Evergreen. Even the prospective parents seem like my kind of people. I really could be friends with them.”

  As Katie and the two moms talk, the rest of the prospective parents straggle in. A few minutes later, the imposing school head, Edgar Mantle, flapping a yellow legal pad against his beefy thigh, strides in. He waves the pad at the room.

  “Hello. I just wanted to welcome you to Evergreen, and to answer any questions you might have.”

  Fifteen minutes of the usual. Questions that Katie could by now not only predict but answer.

  Q. How many applicants for how many spots?

  A. A couple hundred for forty spaces not including siblings. So maybe twenty openings.

  Q. What is your homework policy after kindergarten?

  A. Three hours a night. I’m kidding. We’re more interested in process than in busy work. We do encourage reading at home. I don’t know. Maybe thirty minutes a night. Builds up to maybe forty-five minutes by sixth grade.

  Q. What are you looking for in a prospective applicant?

  A. We’re looking to build a community. We want people who see eye to eye with our philosophy, who get who we are. And we’re looking for balance. Diversity in every way.