This IHT.com article has been sent to you by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
some might see that pre-school education is nothing to be laughed at. I read
some years back (in Times of India) that some CEO got his company to donate one
million dollars so that his own children could attend such a school in New York.
Umesh
------------------------------------------------------
For these New York City tots, only limos will do
By Eric Konigsberg The New York Times
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The cars gather in front of the 92nd Street YMCA in Manhattan about 8:30 a.m.
In the front seats sit hired drivers (nobody uses the term chauffeur anymore).
The cars are mostly big and mostly black luxury-edition sport utility vehicles
like the Mercedes GL-Class or the GMC Yukon Denali. They fill the lanes in
front of the Y's entrance on Lexington Avenue, often two or three rows deep.
It looks like the outside of an arbitrage house just before trading hours, or
perhaps the Knicks' private entrance to Madison Square Garden on game day.
Until, that is, the drivers open the back-seat doors and the passengers' feet
emerge. These are not the feet of profit-takers or NBA players. These feet wear
Sonnet Maryjanes and Primigi sneakers with Velcro closure straps.
These feet are only a half-foot long.
The children — ages 3 through 5 — are enrolled at the Y's famous nursery
school. The livery convention on Lexington Avenue occurs most every weekday.
Neighbors of the Y and parents with children in the nursery school say they
have seen the number of cars and drivers increase considerably over the past
couple of years.
In exasperation, the director of the school, Nancy Schulman, drafted a letter
to all families insisting that the drivers wait somewhere else while parents or
baby sitters take the children in: Find a legal parking space, or take their
cars for a few spins around the block.
In the letter, which parents received once in the spring of 2006 and twice this
school year, Schulman played perhaps the only bargaining chip she has, stating
that failure to observe this rule could hinder their children's chances of
getting into the kindergarten of their choice.
The letter said that idling cars posed a safety risk, several parents said, and
reminded families that one assessment Schulman and her colleagues are asked to
make by lower-school admissions officers is whether the applicant's parents
have been "cooperative" with the school's requests.
"The letter said, 'When the ongoing schools ask about your cooperation, I will
have no choice but to tell them the truth,'" one parent said.
Alix Friedman, a spokeswoman for the school, confirmed the contents of the
letter, saying: "Our main concern is the safety and welfare of the children who
are being dropped off. We don't want the child to have to walk through two or
three lanes of cars."
Some parents applauded the action. "Personally, I think it's great of the Y to
do that," said one mother who takes her child to school by taxi. "The thing
with this place and drivers, it's revolting. But, obviously, it hasn't had any
effect." She nodded toward the morning's big black car traffic jam.
Like most parents contacted for this article, this mother insisted on anonymity
— not, she said, because she had concerns about offending nursery school
administrators ("My child has already gotten into Dalton") or her fellow
parents, but because, as she put it, "What good would it do me?"
The Y is hardly the only school in the neighborhood where children get to
school by car and driver. Dropoff hour at Nightingale-Bamford, on 92nd Street
between Madison and Fifth Avenues, and at Dalton's lower school, on 91st
between Park and Madison, is often clogged by chauffeured SUVs.
Dalton's chief financial officer, Ned Pinger, stands outside every morning to
greet students, which often involves opening doors and helping them out of the
back seat. "The heads of elementary schools are often outside doing this, and
it becomes a little ridiculous," said Sandra Bass, who publishes Private School
Insider, a newsletter for New York parents. "You can't tell who the master is
in this situation."
Myrna Weiss, a former member of the Y's board of directors and a grandparent of
a child at the nursery school, interpreted the use of chauffeurs as a way for
parents to protect their children door to door. She added: "It's also about
one-upmanship. That game used to be played much more quietly, over what clubs
the parents had their children's birthday parties at. There weren't such
visible signs of a pecking order."
Over the course of four mornings this winter, at least 22 chauffeured SUVs were
seen, most of them repeatedly, waiting in front of the school while parents
brought in their children.
Most of the cars belonged to families who live between Lexington and Fifth
Avenues and 70th to 86th Streets. Subsequent research found that an
overwhelming majority of the fathers in these families earn a living in capital
management — running money for hedge funds or private equity funds — though
there was one television executive and one professional athlete. (Most couples
are in their late 30s and got married at least 10 years ago; many of the
parents did not grow up in Manhattan but on Long Island or in Westchester; many
of the fathers come from middle-class backgrounds; and a good number of the
mothers were raised in notably wealthier circumstances than their husbands).
The public relations executive Dan Klores, who owns one of the SUVs, said he
was unaware of Schulman's letter. "I don't have much to do with the place," he
said. "My wife takes my kid by stroller."
A parent whom other parents identified as a chauffeur-using mother, Alison
Schneider, whose husband, Jack Schneider, is a hedge fund manager, said, "I got
the letter, but I don't really have any feelings about it one way or the other.
It's kind of boring. It's about cars and parking."
Over the past couple of weeks, a staff member from the Y's nursery school has
been seen directing waiting cars away from the school. The chauffeurs idled in
double-parked formation one block farther down Lexington, or around the corner
on 91st Street. Posters to the New York bulletin board of the Web site
Urbanbaby.com, which is popular with mothers of young children, have
occasionally made note of the scene. "So this morning I was at the 92nd Street
Y and there were 10 black Escalades and Range Rovers double- parked with huge
guys in black suits," one wrote last month.
The consensus from parents who make use of a driver to deliver their children
to school, even if the trip is just a few blocks long, is that time is scarce
and they need a full-time driver themselves anyway — to get them to work or
appointments. "Plus, I live on the West Side," one mother said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/25/news/limo.php
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
