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The accusation made Karen recoil in shame; was he right? “Yes, that’s exactly the idea,” she muttered on her way out of the room.

“Come onnnnnn,” said Matt. But he wasn’t talking to her. The other team must have gotten a basket.



There were two e-mails of note waiting in Karen’s in-box. The first was from Laura, saying that Maeve was starting to settle in at Mather but that she definitely missed her old friends, like Ruby. To that end, she wrote, Would Ruby like to come over for a playdate on Saturday afternoon? Unfortunately, Evan and I will be traveling for work, but our new nanny, Jangchup, will be here with the kids, and I know Maeve would love it if Ruby could join them.

Karen read the e-mail with a certain amount of relish and feeling partially vindicated. It seemed as if, without her having done anything, the power had somehow shifted back into her hands. And she had every intention of exercising it—that is, of punishing Laura and her husband for taking Maeve out of Betts by withholding Ruby’s company. Karen knew she was being petty. It was also arguable that she was being unfair to Ruby, who would surely have jumped at the chance to bake cookies and rainbow-loom with her old friend the following weekend—and who, in truth, had no plans whatsoever on Saturday. But Karen also knew that her daughter could live happily without having done so. With an absurd level of satisfaction, Karen replied:

Hi, Laura. Unfortunately, Ruby already has plans with another friend that afternoon, so I’m afraid she’s not going to be able to make it. But thanks for the invite. Best, Karen



The second e-mail that came in was a Listserv announcement from Principal Chambers explaining that, due to the school’s underenrollment—Betts was at only 75 percent capacity that year—the city’s board of education was planning to move a new K-through-5 Winners Circle charter school into the top floor of the building.

Karen found the news disheartening on multiple fronts. First, she was dismayed to hear that enrollment was flagging at Betts. All the other schools in the area were bursting at the seams; why not Betts? And what did it say about the education she was providing her daughter if the school couldn’t fill its own classrooms? Second, Karen was upset at the prospect of the school having to share facilities with a new one. She’d read stories in the local papers about public-school children in co-located buildings having to eat lunch at nine in the morning and play dodgeball in the hallway while the charter students enjoyed free run of the cafeteria and the gym when they weren’t learning Java on their spanking-new iPads or building robots with the help of their 3-D printers.

Karen objected to Winners Circle on ideological grounds as well. It wasn’t just that the schools were famously run like military-training camps with punishments meted out for every set of hands not folded neatly in a lap, or that they received taxpayer funds but were accountable to no one in the government. It was that WC’s consistently good test scores seemed at first glance to prove that poverty wasn’t a factor in children’s outcomes without acknowledging that WC’s student body was self-selecting and that problem children were regularly “counseled out”—that is, sent back to neighborhood public schools, which inevitably suffered the consequences. And yet, families of color in disadvantaged neighborhoods generally seemed to welcome the arrival of new WC schools, which confused Karen and made her wonder if it was elitist of her to object to them.

She was vaguely aware that some of Hungry Kids’ main donors also supported charter schools, though until just then, she’d never given the crossover much thought. Suddenly curious, she opened Winners Circle’s website and clicked on the tab marked Board of Directors. There were twelve names listed. The first, second, third, and fourth were the usual chief executive officers or managing directors of companies whose names consisted of a predatory bird or a multisyllabic term invoking the beauty of nature followed by the word Capital or Fund. The fifth guy was the former governor of Massachusetts. The sixth was a timber-company executive. The seventh was a cellular-communications titan.

The eighth was—was it possible?—Clay.

Karen’s eyes blinked then widened at the sight of her new-old friend’s name typed out in an elegant Garamond. It seemed impossible, but there he was. The description beneath his name read:

Clayton R. Phipps III

Prior to forming Buzzard Capital, a private investment firm, in May 2010, Clay Phipps was a partner at Babbling Brook LLC, where he had portfolio and general-management responsibilities and chaired the firm’s advisory committee.



Fascinated by the coincidence and horrified by the connection, Karen quickly banged out an e-mail to him.

Hi, Clay,

Hope all is well and I’m looking forward to seeing you at the gala!

I’m actually writing about a non-HK-related matter. I just got an e-mail from Betts Elementary, a public school in Cortland Hill that my daughter attends. Apparently there are plans to move a new K-through-5 Winners Circle charter school into the building in September. I see that you are on the board of directors. If you have any influence in this area, can you please attempt to put a stop to it? If the WC network has such deep pockets, I really don’t see why it can’t build its own schools instead of poaching existing ones at the taxpayers’ expense. What’s more, my daughter’s school building is already close to capacity, and I would hate to see her and her friends getting squeezed.