Matt Damons daughters denied at NY private school, they wont bend the rules
Page Six’s headline story today is a curious one about how Matt Damon couldn’t get his three youngest daughters into one of New York’s most exclusive private schools, an arts school in Brooklyn called St. Ann’s. The school boasts alumni including Ethan Hawke, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Zac Posen. Apparently Damon and his family are moving back to New York from LA after three years on the west coast and needed to make plans for the girls’ education. They’re not going to St. Ann’s though because the school just does not make exceptions to their application process, not even for celebrities. Damon has previously admitted that he sends his daughters to private school, although his own mother was a public schoolteacher and he’s an advocate of public school, because the “kind of progressive education [he received] no longer exists in the public system.” He’s also spoken out against standardized testing and tying teacher salaries to test results. Here’s Page Six’s story:
Damon is moving his family back to New York after a stint in LA — but has been summarily rebuffed by St. Ann’s, one of the city’s most exclusive schools.
Insiders tell Page Six that the Brooklyn Heights school…. has told Damon that its classes for next year are fully booked.
We’re told [Damon] was hoping that three of his daughters with wife Luciana Barroso — Isabella, 10, Gia, 7, and Stella, 5 — could [attend] the venerable institution.
“They had a conversation with the school, but St. Ann’s just won’t bend the rules,” said an insider. “They don’t care [who the parents of its students are]. A lot of schools will bend the rules very happily; they’ll bring celebrities’ kids in midway through the year or do whatever they want. St. Ann’s just isn’t doing it.”
The school, with tuition that runs between $36,080 and $42,555 per year depending on the grade, offers classes from pre-K through high school and says on its website, “So that every child will flourish, we eschew grades, rankings and prizes in favor of ongoing dialogue and teacher reports.”
The move will be something of a homecoming for the family. When they upped sticks for the West Coast in 2013, Damon said on “Today” that it had been a tough decision to relocate.
“Basically all of our friends with little kids are out there [in LA],” he said. “We’re a little conflicted. We love it here, we’re really happy here and New York will always be here. It might just turn out to be a little jaunt out there and then a return ... It’s hard to leave here.”
Given how important education is to Damon this was probably a big setback for them. This also begs the question – why is Damon moving? Is it for his career, are they sick of LA and/or has he grown apart from Ben Affleck? He lives right down the street from Affleck, who may or may not have been crashing at Damon’s guest house for a while if you believe the tabloids. Now that Affleck is separated or not separated or whatever he’s doing (he probably doesn’t even know), I would bet that his relationship with happily married Damon has changed too.
Getting back to this story, I’m of two minds about it. One, that it’s refreshing that there’s an institution that doesn’t bend over backwards for celebrities and upholds its process, but two if it’s that exclusive and expensive, does it turn out special snowflakes? Maybe I just read that Lena Dunham is a graduate and thought “of course.”
photos credit: FameFlynet
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