Free The Academy by Bentley Little Page B

public school, but it was up to parents with more money and initiative than she to try to fight it.
     
     
    One of the papers in the envelope was for Tony, not her, and it was a pledge of allegiance to the school. Starting next week, said the attached memo, they were going to be replacing the traditional flag salute with this more site-specific version. She read the words:
     
     
    I pledge allegiance
to the school
of John Tyler High.
And to the principles for which it stands.
One student body, under Charter,
With rules and regulations for all.
     
     
    That, she decided, was very odd. She read the pledge again. It was fairly generic and didn’t say much, but there was something about it she didn’t like, an underlying assumption that the school was more important than anything else and that students’ allegiance should be to Tyler High rather than to the nation.
     
     
    That didn’t sit right with her.
     
     
    Kate finished looking through the envelope. Tony’s art teacher, Mr. Swaim, had sent a note home asking if parents could help out by coming in tomorrow and, following his instructions, prepare the materials for various projects his classes would be working on later in the week. He needed two parents from each period. Since assisting would help satisfy her volunteer requirement, she quickly e-mailed the instructor that she would be happy to show up and do whatever needed to be done, and he e-mailed back later that evening that she should meet him at the art room a half hour before school started at eight.
     
     
    The next morning, she drove while Tony walked. He was at the stage where he didn’t even want to acknowledge that he had parents, and he made her promise that they would arrive separately and that she would pretend not to recognize him if she saw him on campus.
     
     
    All volunteers were required to check in at the office, and Kate stood in an unexpectedly long line before signing her name in a log and receiving a “volunteer pass” from one of the secretaries. Not knowing where the art room was, she asked directions, and when she made her way to the west side of the campus, she was surprised to see quite a few adults standing on the small patch of grass outside the classroom. There were over a dozen women and one man waiting for the art teacher—it made sense: two parents from each period, seven periods total—but seeing so many made her wonder what they were all going to do. It certainly didn’t take fourteen people to cut construction-paper shapes or punch holes in cardboard or do whatever simple prep work the instructor had planned.
     
     
    The parents seemed to be divided into two distinct cliques: a group of stay-at-home moms who had apparently known one another forever and who acknowledged her arrival with cursory insincere greetings before returning to their talk of scrapbooking; and a smaller but even more annoying pack of tattooed alterna-parents who completely ignored her existence. She ended up bonding with a grandmother named Lillianwho was happily sorting through the contents of an oversized canvas bag, looking for her crochet needles. They talked as easily as old friends until the door to the art room opened and the teacher bade them all come inside.
     
     
    “You know,” the older woman confided, “I’m not sure if my being here even counts. According to my granddaughter Megan’s contract, her parents are supposed to volunteer. I don’t know if I’m allowed to substitute.”
     
     
    “Talk to the people in the office. They should be flexible on something like this.”
     
     
    “ Should be. But that doesn’t mean they will be. So far, my daughter is not very impressed with this charter school, and I have to say I agree.”
     
     
    One of the alterna-moms, a ferret-faced woman wearing camouflage pants and a faux Ramones tour T-shirt, pushed past them into the room and gave Lillian a bitchy look of disapproval. Kate was about to say something, but her new friend must have guessed her