Class Warfare

“Nobody wins in a situation like this,” says Steve Piltch, the headmaster of Shipley, the private school down the road.


BACK AT THE Pouls house, while both Amanda and Samantha are away at camp, Sheryl walks up the stairs to Amanda’s room. A uniformed employee who has been folding the girl’s tiny pants excuses herself. The room is big but not over-the-top, and it’s decorated like any kid’s, with paraphernalia from High School Musical and a small collection of wigs and dress-up clothes. Next to Amanda’s desk, a sheet of newsprint is tacked to the wall — some kind of writing exercise done in a child’s hand. “Mrs. Daley is nice,” it says. “Mrs. Tollin is cool.”

If the case goes to trial, which Halpern is pushing for, Tollin’s side will likely subpoena Baldwin students past and present, including both the Pouls children. “Everything hinges on Amanda’s statement,” Tollin says. “It was Amanda who said, ‘Mrs. Tollin is mean and she yells, she didn’t wave to me.’”

In the meantime, the Poulses are preparing their defense. “This woman is trying to ruin my life,” Michael Pouls says in a desperate, anguished message on my voicemail. “I love my kids and I love my family, and someone’s just trying to ruin that.”

The lawsuit could take, Mark Halpern estimates, up to seven years to be resolved. “This is where the school made a mistake,” he says. “I don’t think anybody realized what it would cost to placate this family.”

With all of the agendas in play — Tollin’s, Halpern’s, Baldwin’s, Michael Pouls’s — it’s hard to remember what the original argument was even about. From the smile on her little heart-shaped face as she wriggles over her French toast at Ozzie’s luncheonette in Longport a few weeks later, it seems Amanda has totally forgotten her problems with Mrs. Tollin. But it’s a safe bet it won’t last. A small school is like a small town: Word gets around fast. “The people this is going to be hardest on is the children,” one Baldwin parent said, whispering over the phone, as if worried that someone on the Main Line would hear. “But nobody’s thinking about the children.”