“Private school,” Mom suggested, when I was home mid-tour from Korea, “When you get to Texas, look into private schools. Someplace small, where they pay attention to every kid, not just the troublemakers.”
A friend of mine who was already in Texas sent me the yellow page listings for private schools in San Antonio, and I began writing to the best prospects. Dad would never forgive me if I sent her to a school which in all seriousness taught creation science, and the Episcopalian schools charged tuition more in line with a college, which left me looking at the Catholic high schools, of which there were nearly a dozen. One of the smallest was St. Francis, a girls’ only school close by the Lackland/Kelly AFB area, and pleasingly enough, the tuition was economically doable for me. The Principal, Sister Jean-Marie, was also the only one who wrote back and said, yes, it would be possible for my daughter to join the freshman class in January, halfway through the year, and the appropriate fees would be pro-rated on that basis.

 

I wrote back, setting a date to inspect the school, and for Sr. Jean-Marie to interview my daughter, but I had pretty much made up my mind sight unseen, and I think Sr. Jean-Marie had also.

So I broke it to Blondie;
“Sweetie, when we get to Texas, you’re going to go to private school.”
“OK, “ she agreed, warily.
“Catholic private school. Run by nuns.”
“Mmm… like Trouble with Angels?” a little less wary, interest breaking through. This was going well.
“Catholic private school, run by nuns, girls-only.”
“Mmm, ok.” Dubious expression now, and I thought I’d better get to the last.
“Catholic private school run by nuns, girls-only… and with uniforms.”
Long silence, broken by the wary question.
“What do the uniforms look like?”
“We’ll find out when we get there,” I said, “Probably plaid skirt and white blouses. Ankle socks and sensible shoes. Very preppy.”

 

On our second or third day in San Antonio, we drove over to the school at mid-morning to get things settled. I had copies of Blondie’s transcripts, and her shot records. Exiting off the highway, and going south along a four-lane boulevard into the South side, and my heart began to sink. This was a semi-industrial part of town, warehouses and factories mixed in with tracts of tiny old houses and little businesses with hand-painted signs… not exactly the Bad part of town, but within a couple of highway exits of it. But then I began to notice that most of the little houses looked well-kept--- not the least bit slummy. And the businesses were in fact, open for business. Nothing much was boarded up and derelict, and there was no graffiti. I was reassured still more when I found the right cross-street, and there was the school, a nice range of 1960ies, flat-roofed buildings, two stories with windows all across the front, trees all around and a dusty meadow of mown weeds, grass and rocks out in front.

 

Sr. Jean-Marie’s office was off the lobby, and she was about my age, with a round and guileless-looking face. She and only one or two of the older nuns wore anything like a habit, even the modernized black and white with coif. She looked over Blondie’s shot records, and her academic transcript, making a “tisk” sound at the low mark in Algebra.
“We’ll have to do something about that,” She said, and asked if we would like to see the school facility. The bell for passing period had just rung. Once out in the corridor, Sr. Jean-Marie deftly split us up, sending my daughter off with a girl chosen apparently at random;
“This is Blondie, her family is considering having her join us. Why don’t you show here where her locker would be?”

I was handed off on Sister Alicia, an elderly nun in full Franciscan black and white, who took me around to several classrooms upstairs. The school seemed curiously familiar, much like the one I had gone to: same industrial linoleum, the same ranks of metal lockers, tall metal-framed windows cranked open to catch the breeze. The students were different, being all girls, mostly Hispanic and all in white gym blouses with either brown-and-white plaid skirts, or khaki drill slacks or shorts. As we went up the stairway, Sr. Alicia greeted a girl going down,
“Good Morning, Jasmine, “ she said. Jasmine muttered something hasty and Sr. Alicia reproved her.
“We do not reply like that,” and Jasmine gulped, and paused on the staircase and said carefully,
“Good Morning, Sister Alicia.”
“That’s better, “ Sister Alicia nodded approval.

 

It was a little thing, an omen but that made up my mind. This school had standards, and insisted they be met, the big standards as well as the small. Back in Sr. Jean-Marie’s office, I wrote out a tuition check for the school’s bursar, while Sr. Jean-Marie and Sr. Alicia worked out a schedule of classes for Blondie to commence the next day.

“I thought it was a joke, “Blondie said later, “ I thought you and Grandpop were playing a joke on me, scaring me by saying that this was the school I would be sent to if I didn’t shape up.”
”So when did you realize it wasn’t a joke?”
”Sophmore year.”
“I’d have thought it was when we bought all your uniforms at Kingston.”
Blondie had looked at herself in the mirror, absorbing the full horror of the plaid skirt, white blouse and gray pullover and said, half-jokingly
“Mom, I may never forgive you for this.”

I thought she looked very proper and studently: $300 worth of blouses, skirts and khaki shorts lasted the next four years, as she remained roughly the same size and shape. Back-to-school shopping list every August thereafter meant picking up a six-pack of white cotton ankle socks.

 

The school she would have gone to is around the corner from my house in deepest Northside suburbia; a large, lavishly new facility, air conditioned, a generous library with all the goodies, football team and band, well-paid, accredited teachers in large modern classrooms. The student body would have been mixed, but mostly middle class. St. Francis was old and small in comparison--- barely 250 girls at peak-- the library a joke and the textbooks worn and verging perilously on the out of date. The parent’s association’s main goal the years Blondie was there was to get window AC units installed in all the classrooms. The gymnasium remained as nature intended, and Twinkie the school’s antiquated bus almost never made it further than the end of the driveway before breaking down. The parents of many of her friends were working-class Hispanics, making sacrifices to ensure the best education they could for their daughters.

 

Placed in the balance and tipping it well in favor was that the classes were small, the teachers exacting and the standards rigorous. All the advantages of the schools she had gone to in Utah and California were as nothing to the attitude of a small school on the industrial side of town: which was “ This is the material, you are capable of learning this materiel, and there is no excuse acceptable for not doing so, so let’s get started.”

All the money in a school budget can’t make up for not having that attitude.