"For a kid my age, I really understand what has happened in this world."
October 25, 2016 6:38 AM   Subscribe

HBO's Class Divide is a documentary that profiles the neighborhood of West Chelsea, New York, and in particular focuses on the housing projects that sit across the street from Avenues: The World School, a private school with an entrance fee of $50,000 per year.
posted by roomthreeseventeen (12 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow, normally I ignore what schools say they cost because I got to go to fancy schools on aid, but they sure are dickbags about aid. Boo Avenues.
posted by dame at 6:42 AM on October 25, 2016


Even in the ridiculousness of NYC private schools, Avenues is known as an absolute hall of horrors.

At an open house for a better nursery school last year we were at a woman asked if they would offer mandarin immersion, and when told no, she protested saying kids needed to learn mandarin.

The head of school looked at her and said "maybe you should consider Avenues" to much snickering in the crowd.

Also the tuition is an outlier at all ages, but egregiously so for Nursery. City & Country is half for nursery and that's a pretty high prestige/perceived quality school.
posted by JPD at 6:50 AM on October 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yikes, I read the financial aid page for Avenues.

--
DOES AVENUES EXPECT BOTH PARENTS TO BE EMPLOYED TO FILE AN APPLICATION FOR FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE?

Absent a child not yet of school age or an elder relative permanently in the home in need of care, Avenues expects both parents to work in order to contribute to their child’s education. $50,000 in income will be imputed if the above situation does not apply.

DIVORCED, SINGLE, OR NEVER MARRIED PARENTS: WHAT DOES AVENUES EXPECT?

Avenues believes that both parents are responsible for the education of a child. Any legal arrangements or commitments to the contrary are the responsibility of the parents to negotiate between themselves. A notarized affidavit is required when one parent is completely absent.
--

To be fair to the school, however, they probably *have* to take a hard line. You can bet their rich banker asshole target market will exploit every possible loophole to grab as much aid as they can.
posted by xthlc at 7:01 AM on October 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


To be fair to the school, however, they probably *have* to take a hard line. You can bet their rich banker asshole target market will exploit every possible loophole to grab as much aid as they can.

I'm pretty sure the schools Avenues would like to view as their peers don't do that.
posted by JPD at 7:09 AM on October 25, 2016


I am now even more excited to watch this over lunch. Please share more NYC school gossip, JPD. Is Dalton as insufferable as the former students I met in college were? Is Brearly as nice as their students? Who has the worst parents?
posted by dame at 7:24 AM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Eh, good point. Anyway my experience with schools like Avenues is that tuition aid doesn't exist to actually make the school diverse in the ways you'd think. It's more to bring in a few less affluent families who nonetheless have piles of elite cultural capital (think classics professors from ivy institutions, symphonic cellists and the like) in order to add a few more interesting parents to the legions of finance professionals and the independently wealthy.
posted by xthlc at 7:26 AM on October 25, 2016 [15 favorites]


Do not despair...with the High Line, super expensive living places have been spring up all around Chelsea, and soon, with gentrification, there will be many with lots of money and many with little being displaced. The super rich are always with us...so too the very poor.
posted by Postroad at 8:12 AM on October 25, 2016


This sure seems awful, but I'm happier with the rich living in proximity to the poor so they can at least see what's going on, unlike most cities where the rich live in blissful ignorance.
posted by miyabo at 9:27 AM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Completely a tangent, but for a while I was doing some occasional work in this area and would often walk down W26th past this building at the corner of the projects. It's hard to tell from street view, but it's built on a honeycomb floorplan, with three hexagonal rooms. I've never seen anything like it, and the internet doesn't seem to know it exists. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets knocked down someday given the lack of attention, but it's definitely a weird thing to see. also yes fuck avenues
posted by phooky at 9:31 AM on October 25, 2016


Update: I watched part of this over lunch and it made me too sad so I had to stop. Though we weren't as poor as the kids in the projects and though we had that shabby but educated middle-class thing going on, my mom finished college when I was 9, and I definitely remember not having a lot. I got out as much through going to fancy schools (topping out at a nice Ivy) as through any job I actually have. And while there are definitely downsides to being the poor brown kid ... I just want to grab all those cute kiddos and send them to the fanciest of schools.
posted by dame at 10:02 AM on October 25, 2016


I almost turned this off after the third dramatic camera pan from the rich side to the poor side. It ended up being a pretty good unflinching portrait of class.

I'm sure it didn't, but I felt gross for wondering if the documentary played a role in what happened later in the film. Could encouraging kids to analyze their situation for a camera create more pressure?

Here's Kottke exploring The High Line in 2004 before it was transformed.
posted by systematize at 11:11 AM on October 25, 2016


Regarding Avenues' lack of financial aid, whereas most of the other elite private schools in NYC and the US are non-profit institutions, Avenues is unabashedly for-profit. This is an important distinction, I think.
posted by nikoniko at 2:57 PM on October 25, 2016


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