Prepping Chelsea

SIDWELL FRIENDS, A PRESTIGIOUS WASHINGTON Quaker school, teaches young people the importance of simplicity. But when Chelsea Clinton begins classes there later this month, her life will be anything but simple. There'll be new friends to make, new teachers to impress, all under the watchful eye of ubiquitous attendants in bad suits and dark glasses. If that isn't enough, Chelsea will start out knowing that, fairly or not, her very presence there opens her father to the charge of being a hypocrite.

When the President-elect announced that he and his wife had, after much discussion, finally selected Sidwell, some educators were quick to criticize the move as a conspicuous slight to the public education system Bill Clinton has so avidly championed and committed himself to improving. Defending the choice, Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos stressed that the Clintons "didn't reject public schools," but had made a personal, parental decision.