The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  Interestingly, no one said no.

  When it comes to the question of money, what matters most, as in most things, is how the sensitive subject is framed.

  “We weren’t sure how to approach the money issue on the application,” Lauren Pernice said. “You can’t blatantly say, ‘We will give you money.’ That sounds crass. Ultimately we decided not to address it at all and just have somebody we know at the school say that we can be counted on to give generously.”

  Lauren has articulated by far the most acceptable approach. As an educational consultant said, “I believe, no, I know, that if you have someone going to bat for you, someone with clout, it will work. Powerful people get in. Powerful people with a lot of money get in. And powerful people who know powerful people with money get in. If I tell a school that this is a great family who will be generous with their time and resources, it will help. A lot.”

  In other words, as an admissions director said, “Bill Gates’s kid is gonna get in. Period.”

  The most famous example of attempting to buy one’s way in occurred in 2002 when Manhattan-based mutual fund manager Jack Grubman attempted to manipulate a million dollars’ worth of AT&T stock in order to get his twins into the 92nd Street Y preschool, a prime feeder into New York’s elite kindergartens. Grubman got caught. His twins have since been condemned to public school, their lives now apparently doomed.

  It’s safe to assume that if Grubman hadn’t gotten caught, he would’ve gotten in. Bill Gates’s fame and well-documented generosity and Grubman’s assessment that a million dollars would buy him two spots at the 92nd Street Y beg the question: if you can buy your way in, what is the going rate?

  “I heard a kid got into Meryton last year because the dad set up an endowment,” Trina D’Angelo said. “We’re talking more money than God. If you’re not in that ballpark, you’re screwed.”

  I have heard a litany of stories, some no doubt apocryphal, in which others, monetary mortals, have tried and failed. A wealthy businessman desperate to secure a kindergarten spot for his daughter in a prestigious parochial school privately approached the director of admissions and asked if there was anything in particular she needed at the school.

  “What’s at the top of your wish list?” he asked.

  “We would really love a new stained-glass window,” she said.

  Within a week, workers and artisans were dispatched, and in a few months a new stained-glass window was installed at the preschool, costing upwards of $25,000. It wasn’t enough. His daughter didn’t get in.

  Another man began writing an annual $5,000 check to a prestigious private school beginning the week his child was born.

  Again not enough. His child was refused.

  But another woman was told in her interview that if she wanted a spot for her daughter, she needed to take out her checkbook and write a check for $10,000 right then.

  “That’s how much a kindergarten spot costs today,” the interviewer told her.

  “I’m not sure I’m willing to do that,” the woman said.

  “That’s fine,” the interviewer said. “Plenty of people are.”

  The woman wrote the check. Her child got in.

  I have seen cases firsthand in which children of families with more money than God have leapfrogged over the rest of the pack and landed firmly in the center of incoming kindergarten classes. Many private schools operate on a deficit; they rely on fund-raising or donations from families within or connected to their community to make up the difference. As the cost of living soars, parents who willingly open their wallets, especially when it comes to major expenses, are always in demand. But having more money than God doesn’t necessarily mean an eagerness to part with it.

  “Every acceptance is a leap of faith for both the family and the school,” said Nan F., director of admissions at the Darcy School. “It’s hard but I know we’re on firm ground if we refuse a kid who’s really bad, a clear 1, even if the family is high-profile. I can’t tell you how many times someone will pledge a million dollars to our building campaign and end up not paying it off. And especially with an elementary school, there is no philanthropic record for most families. I’m sure it’s tempting for many schools to sweep everything under the rug because Daddy is going to give a million dollars. But no one wants to deal with a child who is miserable. I would hope that no school would take a child who they just knew was going to be a failure, even if it meant sustaining him for a while so they could use some of Daddy’s money.”

  Despite Nan’s hopes, I heard several stories of schools accepting kids just for the money. Dana Optt offered this example:

  “I know a case in which a school, not Pemberley, took the most obnoxious woman I have ever met who has a kid with severe learning issues. I’m like, ‘Okay, that one’s clear. It’s all about money.’ I called my friend, the admissions director, and I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’

  “She said, ‘Dana, this is known as Board Power. My hands are tied.’”

  In the end, allowing a family to buy a spot in kindergarten is not without risk. Everything comes with a price tag; a family’s generosity rarely arrives without strings. Even if the strings are invisible to the naked eye, the school officials and the family know they are there, waiting to be yanked at any time.

  “One thing that’s happening now, unique to this time, is that parents are buying a school and everything that goes with it: the amenities, philosophy, reputation, everything,” Nan F. said. “The private school population has changed. The parents are often people who have grown up going to public schools, who would actually prefer to send their kids to public school, but who can’t or won’t because of what they perceive as the problems with public school education. These people are paying $20,000 a year plus for kindergarten and they expect a lot for their money. It’s a whole different mentality and it has put a ton of pressure on the schools. If you’re spending twenty grand a year minimum, you want your kid to be the smartest in the class, the best athlete, the best artist, and ultimately to get into the best college. Parents of kindergarten kids have become consumers. They want the biggest bang for their buck. If the school doesn’t deliver, especially if they are major contributors, they will let the school know. Big time.”

  Who Gets In

  “When we decide which kids we’re gonna take, it works like this.”

  Edgar Mantle waves his bear-sized hand over his head as if he’s about to shake an invisible tambourine.

  “Connie, the director of admissions, the kindergarten teachers, and I sit around the conference table. All our applications are complete. The interview has happened, the child visit has happened, all the reports are in, and all the support letters are attached. This is in late February, I think. Time tends to blur.”

  He laughs suddenly, which disintegrates into a worrying cough. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself, scratches his scalp.

  “Prior to this, we’ve taken about two weeks, very intense time, when we have to read all the files. So we sit down in the conference room and we go. Everybody has their numbers ready. Now, we have a form for the kids as well. Same thing as the parent form, a kind of checklist, ranked from 1 to 3. The form is really just to try to help the teachers organize their thinking. That way at the end of the visit, they can write something down about each kid.”

  Edgar pats his head, this time leaving his palm resting on the top of his head like a skullcap. “We look at the red flags first. The 1s. A kid gets a 1 from the teachers, you have to follow that up, take a look at the child’s application and nursery school report and all that. What gets you a 1? If a child can’t participate, if a child doesn’t let go of a parent, if a child has huge separation issues, if a child smacks a teacher or a kid, if a child takes a bite out of me. Then again, maybe the kid knows something.”

  Edgar bellows out a roar, then stops on a dime.

  “We insist that teachers don’t look at a file before a visit. We don’t want to prejudice them in any way. For the most part
, kids want to fit in. That is their natural instinct. You look for that. Kids who want to stand out, who are trying to be noticed . . . that’s a potential red flag. Kids don’t want to be known as different.”

  Edgar pauses, folds his hands on his desk. “When we start, we go around the table and write down all the numbers. Connie is the de facto scribe, recording secretary, whatever you want to call it. A child who gets straight 3s is obviously right for the school. That’s not one we need to talk about. But then it’s ‘Gee, look at this. Two 3s and two 1s. This might be worth a conversation.’ We go back and forth, back and forth. There could be many rounds of talking about particular kids or families. You keep making the pot smaller. It’s a constant honing-down process.”

  Dana Optt begins making her decisions after each Saturday visit, beginning in early January. “I start weeding out right then. You just know some things immediately. You certainly know for whom this is the wrong school, the wrong setting. You ask, ‘Is this child going to struggle? Are we setting up this child to fail?’ I won’t put a child, or a family, or Pemberley through that. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

  Dana’s process involves creating three piles: one for children she likes, one for those on the fence, one for those who are definite no’s. “I go through everything: what the preschool teachers wrote, what the kindergarten teachers wrote after the child visit, and my interview sheets. Then I weed the piles further: This is a phenomenal kid, teachers love the kid, did great at his visit or I think the parent will be a nightmare. She asked if we teach algebra in kindergarten. Okay, next.”

  In a typical season, Pemberley will receive in excess of three hundred applications. “I can easily weed out a hundred to a hundred fifty right away,” Dana said. “You watch and you just know. There are obvious indicators. Transitioning, for example. In many typical kindergartens, you stay with the same teacher all day in the same room. Here you’ve got a big campus. You’re going to go to PE, then to the music room, and so forth. You could be a really bright kid but you may have difficulty with transitions. You can tell who is capable of that kind of atmosphere. Even if you might be great by second or third grade, if I stress you out for two years, to me that’s not the right thing. People say their kid will grow into it. I say I will have ruined them. It’s the wrong thing to do.”

  Despite pedigree, power, money, or all three, there are certain kids whom Dana will just not admit. Next to siblings, these are her most agonizing decisions, resulting in her most difficult conversations. “I can’t help it,” Dana said, her voice tinged with agony. “These kids just don’t belong here.”

  This season, there was a powerful guy. Dana met with the family three times. She tried. But there was no way. She spoke at length to the preschool, evaluated the child personally.

  “The kid refused to go with me,” she said. “The mother said to the kid, ‘Now, honey, we flew all the way back from the south of France to meet Dana.’”

  The kid looked up at Dana. “I don’t like you.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Dana said. “You’re probably exhausted.”

  “Yeah. And I’m not doing anything you tell me.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it’s his day,” Dana said to the mother. “Why don’t you take him to the playground and see if he’s ready in a little while. If not, bring him back next week.”

  “He never acts like this,” the mother said.

  She brought him back the following Saturday. The kid glared at Dana and said, “I’m still not doing anything you say. Unless you give me an electronic toy.”

  “I bet your mom will give you anything,” Dana said. “You come with me, you do what I say, and I guarantee you will get an electronic toy, maybe two.”

  Maybe she’ll give me something, too, Dana thought. Work with me, buddy, I need a new laptop.

  But there was nothing Dana could do. The kid was, in her words, “a disaster.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the father. “I really am.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “We’re used to winning.”

  The phrase rattled around in Dana’s brain for two straight weeks.

  We’re used to winning.

  “It’s stunning to me,” she said. “We’re talking about kindergarten. And what’s right for a child.”

  But all this powerful guy knew was that he’d lost.

  MK, director of admissions at the Longbourne School in New York, begins at the end. “I have two waitlists: a high waitlist and a regular waitlist. I don’t publicize that, though.” A pause. “You don’t know which waitlist you’re on. In a very brutal system I try to be as gentle as possible. So I have four categories—admit, high waitlist, regular waitlist, and deny—but only three are public.”

  “I don’t do a false waitlist,” Dana Optt said. “I put ten boys and ten girls on one waitlist and that’s it. People have no idea how I’ve struggled. Some of the people on the waitlist were on and off the accept list fifteen times. And I agonize over the letter. I always think I’ve written a sensitive letter but every year I go over what I wrote the previous year and I ask myself, ‘Is there a better way to say this?’ There is no good way to say no. The accept letter is a breeze. Hello, this is Pemberley, you’re in. Whatever. All I have to say is yes. And the waitlist letter isn’t too bad. We are one of the few schools that turn you down. Meryton, Darcy, and Hunsford put everybody on a false waitlist. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but I’d rather just turn you down, period. I think it’s unfair to have people waiting, thinking, hoping that it might happen when the school knows it won’t. I believe it’s much better to say, ‘This is not going to happen. Let’s focus on the other possibilities.’ As hard as that is, it’s more humane.”

  Among the families Dana Optt will reject are Howard and Lionel, the two charming, funny, successful gay men she met at the Private School Expo who adopted Justin, the adorable African-American boy. Lionel, the stay-at-home dad, fussed over the application as if it were a master’s thesis, calling Dana for moral support before he was able to relinquish the paperwork and hand it in.

  “How did we do on the essay?” Lionel asked her on the phone a week after submitting their application.

  “For God’s sake, it was fine,” Dana said.

  “Howard wrote it. I think he made us all sound shallow.”

  “It was fine.”

  “I thought he came off as an Asian Paris Hilton.”

  “You know what? You need to go back to work. You’re driving yourself nuts.”

  “Wish I could. This parenting gig is tough. My biggest fear is that when Justin grows up, he’s going to call his memoir Daddies Dearest.”

  Dana looked forward to their interview. She was counting on them to provide her with much-needed comic relief from the wanton anxiety and brazen narcissism that made up many of the other interviews. She was not disappointed. Their interview was the most enjoyable hour and fifteen minutes she would spend the entire season. It was by turns hilarious, emotional, and inspirational. Howard and Lionel were brutally honest about their inadequacies as parents and the unanticipated daily challenges and frustrations of fatherhood. Dana told them how much she admired them. She was rooting for them, she said, pulling hard for Justin. She couldn’t reveal it to them then, but she knew that if Justin performed even marginally well on his Saturday assessment, they were an easy admit, a no-brainer.

  Five minutes into Justin’s Saturday visit, Dana’s heart sank. She saw immediately that Justin was a child with extreme attention and language processing issues. He was completely unfocused, incapable of participating in even one activity. She had observed kids like Justin before, many of whom were children of severely drug-addicted mothers. Justin’s behavior identified him as a classic case. After his disastrous Saturday visit, she pulled out his preschool report. The director of his nursery school had written a recommendation that was guarded and hesitant, couched in language that indicated an awareness of Justin’s issues without directly naming
them. Dana thought back to their interview. Clearly, Howard and Lionel had no idea how badly Justin needed help. As for admitting him to Pemberley, Dana had no choice. She filled out his evaluation form, condemning him to the reject pile.

  The day after the letters go out, Dana sits at her computer going through her e-mails, of which there are more than two hundred. Her incoming mail clicks and she sees a message from Lionel.

  “We are so disappointed that there was no space at Pemberley for Justin. I have to say that we’re not surprised. We know from the ‘park bench’ buzz that this was an extremely competitive year, even more so than usual. And since everyone wants Pemberley, well, we can do the math. Again, Dana, thank you for considering Justin (and us) and it was a pleasure getting to know you. Fondly, Howard and Lionel.”

  Dana finds Howard and Lionel’s e-mail heartbreaking. She reads it again, then dials their number. She gets Lionel’s voice on their voice mail. She leaves a short message, saying only, “This is Dana. After you receive your letters from the other schools, if you’d be interested in hearing some feedback, give me a call.”

  Lionel calls back in less than five minutes.

  “We didn’t get in anywhere,” he says.

  “Unfortunately, I’m not surprised,” Dana says.

  “Dana, I have to tell you something. Two weeks ago, our preschool told us that Justin needs to be evaluated.”

  Dana feels sudden, emphatic relief. “I am really glad to hear that. Lionel, you and Howard have to know that there are things you can do right now to allow Justin to have a very successful school experience. And thankfully, you are in a position where financially you can provide the best—”