The Kindergarten Wars

by Alan Eisenstock

  “What did the Meryton one say?”

  “Did I even open it? Oh yeah. I remember. It told me to fuck off.”

  “No, let’s see.” Erika rummages through the letters on the coffee table, finds the Meryton letter, and reads, “‘The admissions committee at Meryton’ blah blah blah . . . Oh, this is so politically correct. This is lovely. ‘We think highly of Alex . . .’”

  “They think highly of Alex?” Katie says, blasting out a laugh. “They’ve never met Alex.”

  “They’ve never met her? Maybe they just know about her. They’ve heard about her through the grapevine.”

  Katie leans forward on the couch. She pats the cushion next to her. Slams her glass on the coffee table. “Okay. Can I be honest with you now?” She holds for a second, perhaps to get her bearings. When she speaks, her words take on a deeper slur. “I am not that surprised. Given the situation. I’m disappointed. I’m mostly annoyed that there is no closure. I was just hoping for closure today. There is no closure.”

  “What did Miles say?”

  “He was like, ‘Nothing we didn’t expect.’ Which is true. He had very low expectations going in. He protected himself. I had high expectations going in.”

  “Well, for her to say, ‘We’ll see you soon.’ That really threw you off.”

  “I thought we truly had a connection at that coffee. And our interview went so well. Even then she said, ‘Let’s look at the positive side.’ Maybe that’s her spiel. If it is, she ought to change it.”

  Katie stares off. She blinks once. “I should’ve protected myself. Our preschool director did tell me that there were already so many sibling spots taken from our school. She said there were only so many more Hunsford could take. And I knew one family who was our competition. She has two major connections there. Major connections. I guess I couldn’t compete with that. I don’t know.”

  Katie brushes a finger across her nose and faces Erika. “Part of this is ego, too. Trust me. Trust me. My ego is bruised.”

  “Katie, it’s not personal.”

  “Maybe not. But you want to be the one,” Katie says, roaring by her, a runaway train. “You want to be the one who got in no matter what connections they had. Good family. We want them. We have to have them. It’s more political than anything. That’s what I think.”

  “I really think you have to know somebody,” Erika says.

  Silence now as both women sip their drinks. Katie’s eyes begin to flutter; she is fighting to keep them open. If Erika were not here, she would curl up on the couch and crash for the night.

  “One of Alex’s best friends applied,” Katie says. “I wonder if she got in.”

  “Why don’t you call her?”

  “No. I can’t. It’s too raw. I can’t.” Katie closes her eyes. “They’re a nice family.” And she whispers, “But we’re better. Alex is better.”

  From another room, Alex calls out, “Mommy, I need you.”

  Katie sighs. “I’m coming, love.” She pushes herself up from the couch. “Just hearing her voice now, I don’t know, it breaks my heart.”

  She slowly leaves the room.

  “I feel like I’m in a state of mourning,” Erika says. “It’s like there’s been a big loss.”

  She nods once, as if she’s come to a sudden realization, discovered a hidden truth. “She’s going to get in off the waitlist. I feel that. Hunsford is going to come back to her. Meryton, no, forget it. But Hunsford, yes, it’s going to happen. I suddenly feel it. They’re coming back.”

  Katie returns to the living room, stops at the edge of the couch. “She’s so tired, poor thing.” She picks up her glass, doesn’t drink, uses it instead as a prop, waving it to make a point. “You know, there is always the option of keeping her at Bright Stars for another year. Doing a pre-K year, then applying again next year.”

  “She’ll be so bored.”

  “Gracie said that, too. She said don’t do it.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Erika says. “Is your public school that horrible?”

  Katie’s eyes flutter. “Let me be completely honest about our public school. Spanish is the first language for over fifty percent of the kids. Over fifty percent. Due to the test score factor, No Child Left Behind, all they’re doing is focusing on these kids. Why? TO TEACH THEM ENGLISH SO THEY CAN PASS THE FUCKING TEST. My daughter’s reading. Sorry. She’s getting shoved aside. No child left behind? My child is being left behind.” Katie collapses onto the couch. Lowers her head, speaks into the cushion. “It’s just so . . .” And she whispers, “Annoying.”

  “We have to start a movement,” Erika says. “I’m serious. We have to take back our public schools. Can you imagine if we all just sent our kids to our local public schools? It can’t be just one person. Everybody has to commit to go.”

  “But it’s about the teachers. You might be able to take back the schools but you can’t choose the teachers.”

  Abruptly, Katie stands. She measures herself before she speaks. This is to be her final word on the subject for now. She will not speak about it again until Miles comes home, at which point she will kiss Alex and Nick good night, wrap her hand around the rest of the Grey Goose, polish off the bottle, and fall into a coma-like sleep, awakening at eight the next morning with a hangover headache one tick below a migraine.

  “It’s just school,” she says. “But at the end of the day, I love my kids so much that I want the best for them. Why can’t I have it? Why? What did I do? I’m real calm right now. But part of me wants to put my hand through the wall. I know. I got into a school. Not the school I wanted. Didn’t get lucky. I have luck in the important things in life. Kids, men, health—knock wood—friends. It’s the other bullshit things in life. Want to know why I’m pissed off and shitfaced right now? Because of the irony. That’s right. The irony. I wasn’t even going to go through this process. And then I saw Hunsford and I wanted it. I gave up everything for one year, devoted my entire life to getting us into Hunsford. That became my job. Miles has his job. His job is to bring in the money. My job was to get us into Hunsford. And you know what? I failed. I fucking failed. I’m a failure. Today I got fired from my job.”

  The ice in her glass clinks as she heads now for the bottle.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Second Season

  I know it’s hard for parents to believe this, but I am on pins and needles waiting to see who is going to accept their spot.

  —a private school director of admissions

  You Have to Get Over the Names

  For many directors of admissions, the most anxiety-producing part of the application process begins the day the letters go out.

  “It is hell for an entire month, end of March through the end of April,” Dana Optt said. “A lot of stuff moves around. It is an incredibly stressful time. I call it the second season.”

  Some schools agonize over the diversity children they have accepted. “You never know who is going to come,” one head of school said. “This year I took eight kids with full or nearly full scholarship packages. They’re exceptional kids and fabulous parents. I don’t expect to get all of them. We’re far for them, way across town. And we’re in a neighborhood that’s completely foreign to them. Talk about strangers in a strange land.”

  “I feel for them, I really do,” a director of admissions added. “I’m in competition for almost all these kids. I don’t know what kind of scholarship packages the other schools offered. I do know which schools took them. I have to see what happens, see how many I get. And then I’ll go to the waitlist.”

  Dana Optt, perhaps uniquely, offers herself as a resource, consultant, and facilitator to many of the families she has rejected. “The main thing that happens during the second season is that of the three hundred people I’ve seen, two hundred and fifty want to talk to me. Sounds crazy, but I talk to as many of them as I can. I try to explain why they didn’t get in. I hold their hands. And if I can, I try to place people. My attitude is, why shouldn’t I help anot
her school? We all feed off each other. And I want good people to land on their feet. They should be placed. Maybe they didn’t think of such and such a school. At least now they can feel like, ‘Well, I would’ve loved to have gotten into Pemberley, but instead I’m in this other school and it’s a really good place. I found a home.’ The key thing is, you’ve got to get over the names.”

  A short time after Lauren’s phone call, Craig Pernice escorts his client to the door, returns to his desk, and dials Dana Optt. When he identifies himself to Gail, Dana’s assistant, her voice changes direction abruptly, rising from a tone of solemnity into one oozing warmth and welcome. Her hairpin turn surprises Craig. After all, they’ve only made the waitlist; they’re not in. He has to admit that talking to Gail makes him feel as if he’s won something, a consolation prize at least, and that there just might be hope.

  Dana gets on the phone immediately. “I know you didn’t get the result you wanted,” she says. “I’m really sorry. It was a very tough year for boys. But I want you to know, we love your family, and we love Killian. I also want you to know that this is a real waitlist. It truly is. I don’t send out a blanket waitlist letter to everyone who applied.”

  “So it’s selective?”

  “Very much so. I only take ten boys and ten girls. I can’t make any promises but there usually is some movement.”

  Dana stops now, waits for Craig. She would never cop to it, but it is in some way a test. How he responds to bad news is key. Craig is well-known in town, prominent in his field, someone who is used to winning. Dana has turned him away, denied him something that she knows he wants very much. It is a loss.

  Let’s see how he handles it.

  “I’m disappointed,” Craig says. “We love Pemberley. We think it’s the perfect place for Killian and for us. But I understand. You have a very tough job. I’m sure there are a lot of wonderful families that you would love to take but you can’t because of circumstances. I respect that. I just wanted to call and thank you for putting us on the waitlist. We’ll be patient and hold a good thought. If it’s meant to be, great.”

  On the other end of the phone, Dana smiles. Craig’s answer is a home run. She doesn’t know if he’s sincere or if he is a master game player or both. It doesn’t matter. In the thirteen years of a child’s education from kindergarten through twelfth grade, there are certain to be bumps in the road. Seeing how Craig responded to this first bump validates not only the Pernice family, but Dana’s decision to choose them.

  “Thank you for understanding. Some people don’t,” Dana says. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “I appreciate that. Thanks, Dana.”

  She hangs up and immediately relives the conversation she finished fifteen minutes ago with a dad whose daughter she’d waitlisted. While Craig was gracious and humble, this guy was stunned his daughter wasn’t accepted. He wanted answers. He wanted to know the breakdown of the waitlist, wanted to know if the list was ranked (“It’s not,” Dana said), wanted to know the numbers of siblings who were accepted, the boy-girl ratio, early-year versus late- and middle-year acceptances, and he wanted to know his chances. By the end of this conversation, Dana was second-guessing herself, wondering if she had made a mistake. No, she told herself. She loved the kid, loved the mom, but now, thanks to the father, if she were to rank the waitlist, they would slide to the bottom.

  “This is nerve-racking,” Lauren Pernice says to a friend over coffee. “First of all, I’m alone. I have not heard of one other family who got waitlisted at Pemberley. I’m like the Chosen One. This woman I know said to me the other day in carpool, ‘How did you get on the waitlist?’ She said it with such contempt and suspicion, as if I paid somebody off or something. She was so resentful. I frankly never expected that reaction. It really threw me off.

  “The truth is I am a complete and total wreck. This is absolutely the worst. Much worse than the whole process of filling out the applications, agonizing over the interviews, all of that. It’s way more stressful. I don’t sleep. I’m not eating. I leap ten feet every time the phone rings. Praying it’s Dana. Praying a spot has opened up for Killian. And I’m having all these horrible, terrible thoughts. I know that Dana is waiting to hear who is accepting their spots. There have to be a few people who are not going to come, for whatever reason. I know the minority kids she accepted can’t all come to Pemberley. It’s so far from where they live. The best of these kids, I’m sure, got in everywhere. Meryton wants them, Darcy wants them; they all want them. So here I am, and I’m ashamed to admit this, rooting against some poor little African-American or Latino boy. Not rooting against him exactly. Just hoping he’ll choose some other school and give Killian his spot. It’s dreadful. I know. I’m a horrible person. I never thought it would be like this.”

  The news comes to Craig in the form of Lauren’s voice mail.

  “Guess what? WE’RE IN! I just got off the phone with Dana. We’ve been accepted off the waitlist. Can you believe it? We’re in Pemberley. Amazing. Kind of otherworldly, actually. Well, that was easy, right? Call me.”

  When I ask Dana how and why Killian Pernice got in, she flips open the file folder in front of her with the delicate precision of a safecracker.

  “The Pernices. They came to the Private School Expo at Darcy, which was very interesting. Before that they were not considering Pemberley. Okay, the parents’ interview. Obviously, you look at the two of them, the gene pool looks pretty good. The dad is a prominent guy but very down-to-earth. That speaks volumes to me. Now, this year it was much more competitive for boys. My siblings, faculty, and alumni were predominately boys. It was much easier to find an open spot for a girl. Changes from year to year. As I was putting the class together, I had Killian on and off the initial accept list twenty times. The problem is how many kids are there like him? A million of them apply here. I went for geography. Went for a push from lower-income areas. When one of them turned me down, I knew I could get him off the waitlist. The other thing he did, the dad, when they didn’t get in, he made one call. No pushing or screaming. One call. He said, ‘If it’s meant to be, if we get in off the waitlist, it would be wonderful. But I understand it’s difficult. Thank you.’ I was thinking, How are you at handling a situation that you’re not happy with and you’re high-profile? Oh, they’ve got plenty of money. So how he responded to adversity clinched the deal.”

  Dana shuts the folder, the Pernice case closed. She never mentions Third Guy.

  After leaving the news of Killian’s acceptance to Pemberley on Craig’s voice mail, Lauren Pernice marches into her small office off the kitchen, opens a desk drawer, pulls out the application packet for Wickham School, and dumps it into the wastebasket. She then lets out a huge, involuntary, body-shaking sigh. She feels as if she’s opened up an internal release valve and allowed all the pressure to escape.

  With purpose, Lauren strides into the kitchen. Using both hands, she swings open the refrigerator and grabs a celebratory Snapple. She swigs mightily, checks the clock on the microwave, and calculates that she has time for two quick phone calls before she has to leave to pick up Killian at preschool. She calls her friend Susan, gushes her news onto her voice mail, then calls another friend and, briefly, humbly, tells of her triumph. Her friend, a mom with a child a year younger than Killian, screams into Lauren’s ear. Surprised, embarrassed even by her friend’s reaction, Lauren ends the conversation abruptly, saying she has to leave.

  She arrives in Killian’s classroom thirty minutes later. Incredibly, the news of their getting into Pemberley has spread like wildfire. People Lauren knows casually rush over to her and offer congratulations. The director of the school sprints out of her office and engulfs her in a bear hug, teammates sharing a championship victory. Getting into Pemberley has catapulted Lauren into an instant celebrity.

  At dinner the next night, her close friend Wendy says over salad, “People are talking. They heard you got into Pemberley. Everybody wants to know: how did you do it?”

  La
uren isn’t sure what to say.

  “I slept with the director,” she says finally.

  “Seriously,” Wendy says, “how did you get in?”

  “You want the truth?”

  Wendy nods vigorously. Lauren looks at Craig. His face is stony. He shrugs.

  “Connections,” Lauren says. “Pure social capital. We knew someone.”

  Wendy and her husband stare at Lauren. They are mesmerized by her honesty.

  “Look, Killian was a good candidate,” Lauren says after a sip of wine. “Craig and I had a good interview. I didn’t think so at the time, but in retrospect we did. We have means, and Killian did well in his assessment. His performance was essential. If he hadn’t done well, we wouldn’t have gotten in. I’m sure of that. But the reason this process is so trying is because it’s so capricious. The candidates are four and five years old. They don’t have résumés and grades and scores and so forth. So who you know plays a large part. It depends on the schools you’re applying to as well. I know people who got into Evergreen and Bingley who got waitlisted at Hunsford and Meryton. And then of course you hear about certain preschools that are feeders.”

  Lauren sips her wine. “People go into this process very naively. They all believe that it’s about the kid. We all think our kids are superstars. I’m sure Killian is. But even if he had done just okay on his assessment, we would have gotten in. If you want to get into one of the elite private school kindergartens, it’s about money, diversity, and connections. It just is. You have to know that going in. Unless you’re pretty prominent or rich or diverse yourself, you’re going to need some help.”

  Lauren’s pronouncement has somehow left a chill in the air. Sensing the discomfort from Wendy and her husband, Craig catches Lauren’s eye. She knows now to change the subject.