Address to Die For by Mary Feliz Page A

turned on her iPad.
    â€œLooking at our school roster over the weekend,” she said, peering at me over the top of her black-framed reading glasses, “I realized that we had limited room in some of our classes and I had to make adjustments to a few of the students’ schedules. Apparently, Brian thinks he can dictate his own schedule.”
    â€œAre you saying you can’t accommodate him in band?”
    â€œThere are seventy-five students in that class, Mrs. McDonald. It is oversubscribed.”
    It was a concert band class. What difference would it make if the enrollment was seventy-six students instead of seventy-five? And why, if students needed to be cut from the class, did Brian need to be one of them? There were always students who were taking band only because their parents were making them. Those kids would almost certainly volunteer to be dropped from the class . I turned to Brian.
    â€œDid you introduce yourself to the teacher?” I said. “Did you ask if she had room in her class for you?” My kids had grown up on a university campus. Their grandparents and dad were professors. The unwritten etiquette of academia was in their blood.
    Brian looked at his hands and nodded. “She was happy to hear I play French horn.” He looked up at me. “Mom, I have to take band.”
    Miss Harrier tsk ed. “You see, Mrs. McDonald, this is the attitude with which I have a problem. Orchard View Middle School students do not dictate to their parents, teachers, and administrators. At this age we expect them to understand that they cannot have everything their own way.”
    I took a deep breath and thought before I spoke. Brian needed to play music the same way he needed to breathe and I knew that band was a great way for him to meet friends. He was going to take band. But I’d hear the rest of the story from Miss Harrier, first.
    Silence and tension built within the room that was so quiet and stuffy that we were all startled when the air-conditioning fan kicked on and the metal vent made the annoying buzzing rattle that is universal to all public schools. All it would take to prevent that sound would be to tighten the screws on the cover to the ventilation shaft, I thought. But Miss Harrier seemed more interested in putting the screws to my son.
    â€œWhat’s happening with his math class?” I said, jerking my attention back to the matter at hand. In February, when Max and I had met with Miss Harrier, she’d agreed that Brian’s test scores would place him in an upper-level class. It seemed like a straightforward decision. Could Miss Harrier be one of those people who was still, in the twenty-first century, quick to agree with a man and argue with a woman? I didn’t see how the principal of a public school could operate that way.
    â€œMrs. McDonald, all our math classes are fast-paced and instruction is individualized. I’m sure—”
    Her use of educational jargon triggered new levels of anger in me—I’d been exposed to too much of it at the university and had found it often signaled that the speaker was feeling more pompous than they had a right to feel.
    â€œMiss Harrier, Brian grew up on a university campus and we’ve had trouble keeping up with his hunger for math. If we’d known that your classes could not accommodate him, we would have suggested he take math at the high school or the junior college.”
    Miss Harrier shook her head. “I assure you, Mrs. McDonald, we are used to ambitious parents pushing their children, thinking they can dictate . . .” She sighed. “We are one of the top schools in California, but we are also a public school with limited funding.”
    In the back of my mind, I half-wondered if this was a shakedown for a donation. It was a ridiculous, paranoid thought, but once again, Miss Harrier was talking about funding. I wanted to ask about the foundation, and why the missing money