DIDN’T think you’d ever rate a table at Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s exclusive Waverly Inn, where a side of truffled mac and cheese costs $55 and people like you are banished to the bar?
Well, here’s another reason to feel lousy about yourself, New Yorkers: The rope line has been moved to the ninth grade.
This fall, Carter and A-list backers, including actor John Leguizamo, are opening the most selective, pretentious and pricey high school since those insufferable brats danced in “High School Musical.”
I got an up-close peek this weekend at Greenwich Village HS, now under construction on Vandam Street in what is really SoHo. The plan is for kids to rub elbow pads with Carter-friendly Pulitzer Prize-winners. Students will learn about artifacts from a Museum of the City of New York curator, and Mandarin from random residents of Chinatown, all for an eye-popping $34,729 a year. Or $1,000 for what the Web site Gawker calls “the token poor.”
One thing I learned about Greenwich Village HS: It won’t have “classrooms.” Not a single desk or blackboard.
Also, competition – the thing that put us on the moon – is severely frowned upon at this fuzzy-headed institution.
Instead, kids are drilled in the school motto: “Work hard. Take Risks.” And, above all: “Be Kind.”
We had another phrase for kids like that back at Bayside HS: “Doomed.”
Some 45 eager school applicants – many named Olivia and Kaitlynn – gathered Saturday in the empty townhouse that will be home to the school. They engaged in what hyperactive head of school David Liebmann oxymoronically called “a noncompetitive challenge.”
“The kids work collaboratively,” Liebmann told me. “They discuss things.”
Kids worked in teams to design the schoolrooms, while their graying parents watched approvingly. But the kids forgot something. They designed lounges and libraries. Even coffee bars. But hardly a classroom!
Well, who needs them? When it’s finished, this school will have only “seminar rooms,” featuring oval conference tables where the kids can discuss . . . things. Even the athletics program is big on collaboration – with sports like tai-chi and indoor rock climbing. What? No polo?
Lisa, whose daughter now attends public school, told me that Greenwich Village was the only private school to which she’s applied. “This school gave me the chills – and that’s saying a lot!” she said.
So I ask you – what recession?
Already, more than 80 families have applied for 45 ninth-grade seats planned for what is now an empty shell.
The school hopes to grow to 300 students in grades 9 through 12.
Maybe your kids will rate a table at Waverly Inn. Ask them to sneak you in.