Class Warfare

Of these stories, few were more salacious than the wild ones told by the players themselves. “I know a woman,” says Michael Pouls, 45, a mountain of a man with dark hair, preternaturally white, straight teeth, and a permanently furrowed brow, “who will tell you she witnessed Patsy Tollin throwing a blind child into a locker.”

“Arrgh, I can’t wait to nail this guy,” says Tollin’s lawyer, Mark Halpern, slamming his hand on the table of his firm’s tastefully decorated conference room. Halpern describes himself as a pit bull, although with his Woody Allen-ish frame and expansive, exasperated gesticulating, he’s more like a particularly fierce corgi.

Tollin’s smooth skin, red bob and perfect posture don’t exactly fit the picture of the frail, grandmotherly creature painted in newspaper accounts of her lawsuit, but then, 67 looks a lot different than it used to. And that’s not the only thing that’s changed since Tollin began teaching at Baldwin 22 years ago. The demographics of the monied Main Line have shifted, and along with them, so have the expectations of the parents who send their kids to the area’s vaunted private schools. There’s also been a shift in values, Mark Halpern will tell you, and not for the better.

“It’s not how it used to be,” he says disgustedly. “It used to be that you’re not bravado. You weren’t driving around in your Hummers. It used to be huge estates with incredible money, but those people would never — it was embarrassing to show your money. It was beneath you. You never tried to use your money for anything other than philanthropic things. You would send your kids to school, and if the teacher was strict, you would say, ‘That’s the way it is.’” He shakes his head, glances at his client. “Patsy understood that one of the difficulties she was going to have with me is that I want to try this case because I want to strike back.”

Patsy doesn’t seem to mind. When asked what she hopes will happen to Baldwin and the Poulses as a result of her lawsuit, she doesn’t hesitate. “I want it to hurt,” she says.

EARLY IN THE SCHOOL YEAR, WHEN THEIR DAUGHTER Amanda first started complaining that her second-grade teacher was “mean,” the Poulses thought she was just having a difficult time adjusting. As far as they knew, their 12-year-old, Samantha, had had a great experience with Tollin. But Amanda was different from her lanky, thoughtful older sister — at age seven, she was louder, goofier, and more sensitive.

And Mrs. Tollin was tough. “She’s really not mean,” Samantha would say, when her younger sister complained about the teacher. “Sometimes she just has a way of saying something.”