When It Comes To Breaking In Pre-Schoolers, Some Claim Size Matters

Preschoolers don’t just seem older, they actually are older:

Children who turn 5 even in June or earlier are sometimes considered not ready for kindergarten these days, as parents harbor an almost Darwinian desire to ensure that their own child is not the runt of the class. Although a spate of literature in the last few years about boys’ academic difficulties helped prompt some parents to hold their sons back a year, girls, too, are being held back. Yet research on whether the extra year helps is inconclusive.

Fueled by the increasingly rigorous nature of kindergarten and a generation of parents intent on giving their children every edge, the practice is flourishing in New York City private schools and suburban public schools. A crop of 5-year-olds in nursery school and kindergartners pushing 7 are among the most striking results.

“These summer boys have now evolved to including girls and going back as far as March,” said Dana Haddad, admissions director at the Claremont Preparatory School, in Lower Manhattan, referring to children who turned 5 in those months but stayed in nursery school. “It’s become a huge epidemic.” In some corners, the decision of when to enroll a child in kindergarten has mushroomed from a non-issue into an agonizing choice, as anxiety-generating as, well, the private school kindergarten admissions process itself.

“It’s kind of crazy to hold them back,” said Jessica Siegel, 40, whose daughter, Mirit Skeen is back for another year at Montclair Community Pre-K in New Jersey, although she turned 5 in late August and the public school cutoff there for kindergarten is Oct. 1. “Someone’s going to be the youngest. Someone’s going to be the smallest.”

Ms. Siegel and her husband considered the decision for months, waiting until the week before public school started before making it final in case Mirit “suddenly had some kind of huge emotional shift.”

“I felt like her whole experience is about being the smallest and the youngest, and I wanted to change that experience for her,” Ms. Siegel said, adding, “The more people do it, the more people do it — partially because you don’t want yours to be the last.”

To stave off preschool fatigue, some city parents send their children to public school kindergarten for a year, hoping to transfer them to a private kindergarten the next year. Columbus Park West Nursery School on the Upper West Side is considering opening a “junior kindergarten” to accommodate children who in the past would simply have headed for the real thing.

Somewhere, A Smug Mark Ecko Shoots One More Rhinoceros . . . And Smiles

Why is the City wasting money defending laws they acknowledge are unconstitutional*? Not to paint too broad a brushstroke (ahem), but really now:

While defending the city’s anti-graffiti ordinance is necessary, a lawyer for the city conceded that the law was written so broadly that it conceivably could allow for a police officer to arrest students involved in set design for a theater production.

The city attorney, Scott Shorr, made the statement during a hearing yesterday regarding the constitutionality of the ordinance, which bans youths between the ages of 18 and 21 from purchasing wide-tipped markers or spray paint or carrying those items outside their homes.

The ordinance, which went into effect earlier this year, has been challenged by several art students who say it makes it very difficult for them to create art. Earlier, a federal judge, George Daniels of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, ordered the city not to enforce the ordinance while the lawsuit is going forward.

A panel of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals heard the city’s defense of the law yesterday.

One judge on the panel, Barrington Parker, seemed skeptical of the law after Mr. Shorr told him that, as written, it gave the police power to arrest not only graffiti vandals, but even artists whose creative pursuits involved spray paint.

“I’m a student at Tisch at NYU,” the 62-year-old judge hypothesized. “I’m doing set design. I’m in the studio doing set design for a production of ‘Twelfth Night.’ Can a police officer arrest me?”

“Yes,” Mr. Shorr said. “You are subject to arrest.”

That wouldn’t change even if a university dean told the officer that the student had permission to work on the set design, Mr. Shorr said when questioned further.

*Has anyone ever figured out which Councilmember has introduced the most expensive unconstitutional legislation?

New Yorkers Love Lines Even More Than Robert Downey, Jr.

Suggesting that it just may be a gyro* after all, the New York Sun invokes the halo effect:

The daily pita pilgrimage begins at 7:30 p.m., when New Yorkers — and a handful of in-the-know tourists — begin lining up at the corner of 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue. Within minutes, the line emanating from the fragrant gyro stand there stretches halfway down the block.

Two other gyro carts within a half-block radius have no wait at all. But city foodies contend that Halal Gyro and Chicken is worth waiting on a line that can exceed 45 minutes on some evenings. The stand’s $5 platter includes chicken, lamb, rice, salad, pita, and, most importantly, customers say, a tasty combination of white and red sauces.

. . .

In New York, a city of seemingly limitless choices, inhabited by famously fast-paced people, there are still some things for which residents are willing to wait in line. What’s worth the idle time? For some it’s a bargain; for others it’s a status symbol. For some, it’s a gyro platter; for others it’s a pair of sneakers, a basket of Buffalo wings, a museum exhibit, a stuffed toy, a cupcake, or two tickets to “Shakespeare in the Park.”

The heightened anticipation for what’s deemed worth waiting for can enhance the mind’s perception of those cart-cooked gyros, saucy chicken wings or buttercream-frosted cupcakes, a New York-based clinical psychologist, Robert Leahy, said, referring to a phenomenon known as the “Halo Effect.” “Today people are very insecure about getting the right thing, and the easiest way to make a decision is to seek out what everyone else is buying,” Mr. Leahy, who heads up the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy on East 57th Street, said. “If they didn’t feel like they had to fit in, and they just looked at what they value, they might make different decisions.”

*Or Buffalo Wings, Noodles, Buttercream Frosting or Cheese Omelettes.

But What Would Matthew Modine Have To Say?

Now this sounds useful:

Outside Colombia, Bogotá is better known for its association with cocaine trafficking than for its traffic congestion.

For many of the city’s 7 million residents, however, it was the bumper-to-bumper traffic that topped their list of grievances as of 1998, when Enrique Peñalosa was elected mayor. During his three-year tenure, Mr. Peñalosa devised and implemented a comprehensive city bus system that has eased congestion in Colombia’s capital and cut Bogotános’ commutes to work by hundreds of hours a year.

In his keynote address today at a New York transportation conference, Mr. Peñalosa will discuss the overhaul of Bogotá’s mass transit system, and ways traffic could be eased along New York’s car-clogged streets. More than 500 people, including elected officials, mass transit advocates, community activists — and even celebrities such as actor Matthew Modine and the musician Moby — are expected at the day-long conference, hosted by Manhattan’s president, Scott Stringer.

. . .

Acknowledging the vast differences between New York and Bogotá, the latter of which is far poorer and has no subway system, Mr. Peñalosa said not all of the recent transportation reforms instituted in his hometown would be applicable here.

The Only Thing In Law Enforcement That Should Be Pushing 90 Is A Dodge Charger*

OK, last time was pushing it but this really would be going too far:

Yes, he is 87 years old. And yes, he is not up for re-election for another three years. But Robert M. Morgenthau, who has been the Manhattan district attorney pretty much since the dawn of time, is gearing up for 2009.

Next Monday, his campaign committee is holding a fund-raising cocktail party, with tickets at $150 to $1,000, and it expects about 75 guests, said Julie S. Nadel, who was a coordinator for Mr. Morgenthau in the Democratic primary last year.

The invitation notes that the party will occur on National Boss Day, a nod to the fact that Mr. Morgenthau has been known as “the Boss” to hundreds of lawyers who have worked for him in the past 45 years: he had been United States attorney in Manhattan before becoming district attorney.

Mr. Morgenthau has not publicly announced whether he intends to run again at age 90, and he did not respond to a request for comment left with his office.

*Leslie Crocker Snyder has our permission to use this slogan on her ’09 campaign bumper stickers. (And in case you forgot about Dodge Chargers.)