A Public School Goes Private

Alvin leaned on the office windowsill and looked outside. A crowd of bored people had gathered at the school gates, waving flags and claiming to cheer on the 72 children taking their exams. They were praying for them.

He had no idea whether anything like this was happening elsewhere in the United States. In Hell's Kitchen, an exam that defined the results of twelve years of hard work and, as a bonus, decided the children's futures seemed especially important.

It seemed important enough that plenty of people who weren't parents had come here. Some of them weren't even from Hell's Kitchen.

The young Department of Education employees assigned to supervise the exams kept patrolling the test rooms. It looked like those high-and-mighty bigwigs simply didn't believe a Community School in Hell's Kitchen could produce anything bright. Maybe they had other motives.

Whatever the reason, their actions had enraged Old Cage. Even after the furious old man had beaten one bespectacled Department of Education employee with his cane, the others had remained at their posts.

Alvin had stopped Old Cage from going any further. The respected old man felt insulted. The Department of Education was expressing its distrust of the Community School through a silent protest.

In truth, Alvin had been at odds with the Department of Education ever since he became principal of the Community School.

Beating up Department of Education officials. A deputy secretary had been stripped naked in Hell's Kitchen and lost most of his teeth.

Even with Alvin's influence backing him up, the slippery Vice Principal Nelson had only managed to secure the bare-minimum funding from the Department of Education and the state government.

The main reason was that this Community School was challenging tradition. The changes here made a lot of people uncomfortable, and they couldn't