Room, Board and so Much More

At a bit past 1, the temperature in Claremont was 104, the air scraped dry and gritty by a week of Santa Ana winds, and Sara and Ben Kingstone were racing each other up a hill. Granted, they are 10 and 9 years old, respectively, but still the steady swift sound of their tennis shoes churning up the tinder of fallen eucalyptus leaves seemed slightly hallucinogenic. For a moment, Ben took pity on his elders and waited while his sister ran on. Like his sister, he is an electron of a child--always moving, shining with dark hair, wide eyes and a blinding streak of a smile. At the top of the hill, in scouring heat, he was not even breathing hard.

“Those are the boys’ dorms,” he said, pointing to a group of taupe buildings on the left, “and there’s the swimming pool where we go all the time.” He gestured ahead impatiently.

For many kids, the words “boarding school” have ominous overtones, conjuring images of Salinger’s phony-filled Pencey Prep or the evil smile of the Baroness as she explains her plans for the hapless Von Trapp children. Even for adults, the term has an East Coast, if not European, taint to it, replete with repression, oppression and a caste-like hierarchy based on wealth and family station.

But to Sara and Ben Kingstone, boarding school just means home.

In fact, they’ve spent most of their lives at boarding schools. Far from Dickensian orphans or banished scions of decaying gentry, they have lived for the last four years with their parents, Jo-Anne and Jim Kingstone, on the campus of the Webb Schools in Claremont, where Jo-Anne is director of residence and acting dean, and Jim teaches English. Before that, the family lived at King’s-Edgehill, a boarding school in Nova Scotia. In fact, you might say Sara and Ben are the products of boarding school--Jo-Anne and Jim met at Ridley College boarding school, in Ontario, Canada, where they were both teaching English.

“We fell in love over ‘Mill on the Floss,’ ” said Jo-Anne, 38, of the George Eliot novel. “Jim was in the middle of teaching it when he threw out his back. I had just started teaching and was completely green but I was the only other faculty member who had read it. So I took over his class.”

Two years later, the two moved to Japan for two years where they taught, married and had Sara. Ben was born after they returned to their native Canada, where Jim taught at a Winnipeg school, and then the family moved to Nova Scotia, where they spent the next six years.

When they decided it was time to move on, the Kingstones realized that to find a boarding school that would hire two English teachers, they were going to have to expand their search to the U.S. They soon got a call about Webb Schools.

“We said, ‘No way, you’re crazy. We’re not moving our babies to Los Angeles,’ ” Jo-Anne said with a sheepish laugh. “Of course, we’d never even been here. So we came down and fell in love. The big question was could I see our children [living] here? And, yes, it’s been just wonderful.”

“It’s awesome,” said Ben, as he continued his tour of the schools. “It’s like having a 407,000-acre backyard,” exaggerating the size of the 66-acre campus.

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“It’s great,” Sara agreed. “We can just say, ‘Bye, Dad, we’re going for a walk,’ and he doesn’t have to worry. It’s really safe, and there are all the kids everywhere.”

About 350 of them, most of them boarders. Webb Schools consists of the Webb School of California for boys, which was founded in 1922 and has close to 200 students, and the Vivian Webb School for girls, founded in 1981, which has 158 students. Far from being a West Coast knockoff of an Eastern institution, the Webb Schools, for grades nine through 12, is considered one of the top 10 college-preparatory schools in the country. Because so many of the students are far from home (although most are California residents), teachers and staff must pull double duty: creating a rigorous academic and activity schedule while acting as surrogate parents.

About 60% of the school’s 45 faculty members live on campus, some with children, but the Kingstones are the only two-faculty-member family in residence. Which may explain why they seem to be among the most popular.

Jo-Anne especially has a difficult time venturing more than 10 feet across campus without being hailed and consulted in passing (“Mrs. Kingstone, I forgot to put my name on the free breakfast thing so if you see one without a name, it’s miiiiiine,” or stopped with frantic earnestness (“Mrs. Kingstone, you are exactly who I need to talk to. Are you in your office this afternoon? Can I come in?”)

And these aren’t even the students she officially advises. Every faculty member acts as an advisor to a certain number of students, though the two schools handle it differently. The boys’ school assigns advisors to each grade, so every year the boys are under the care of a different team of teachers. The girls are assigned a specific advisor who will remain with them throughout their stay at Webb (unless either teacher or student requests a change). Jim, 43, is the junior-class advisor, and Jo-Anne advises eight students who are seniors. Which means their house, attached to a set of the boys’ dorms, is overrun--and their refrigerator raided--by more than just their own children.

“I’m the oldest of four, so I really like having another family around,” said Bianca Woods, 17, of Oakland, one of Jo-Anne’s advisees. “I baby-sit Ben and Sara a lot, or just go hang out there. The house is always open to us.”

“When I was living in their dorm,” said Ben Day, 17, of Klamath Falls, Ore., “I’d go over there at night and eat bagels, play Chinese checkers.”

“I’m a day student,” says Audrey Rangel, 17, of Claremont, “but I’m on campus a lot. I see Mrs. Kingstone way more than I see my mom. And my mom is really comfortable knowing I have Mrs. Kingstone to talk to.”

As advisors, Jo-Anne says, she and Jim often hear about things--anxieties over grades, problems with family relationships--that the parents do not.

“I’m not as open with my parents,” says Deirdre Echevarria, 17, of Montclair, Calif. “I tell Mrs. Kingstone, [then] ask what I should do, and she’s really good, she gives good advice.”

Juggling two careers, two children and the 24-hour job of surrogate parents requires a lot of planning. Meeting over lunch in the school’s cafeteria, Jim and Jo-Anne quickly dispense with pleasantries and get down to business: Jim is having a barbecue for his class, and shopping must be done, which is good since Jo-Anne is having her students over for breakfast and needs bagels, juice and “whipped cream cheese, not regular.” Jim will pick up Ben and Sara from Sumner Elementary School in Claremont this afternoon, but can Jo-Anne move the family car back home later while he’s at cross-country practice? She can.

“One of the nice things about working together is that we can check in like this, even if it is for just a few minutes,” Jo-Anne said.

And then they’re off, she back to her office, he to supervise Sara and Ben until 3:30 when he will coach his runners and Jo-Anne will finish up her administrative day, then head out to coach soccer while Sara and Ben do homework and play nearby.

“This has been a real time of transition for us,” Jim said.

The weather was one big change, the traffic more intense than they had ever imagined, as is the ambitious American academic work ethic on which Webb prides itself.

“The kids here are so motivated, so accelerated,” Jim said.

But the more basic shift has been a classic redivision of labor within the family.

“When we were in Nova Scotia, Jo worked part time. Now she’s full-time administration. My teaching schedule has more flexibility, so I am doing much more at home. For a while,” he said, with a grin, “I was pretty obsessed with things like laundry. That’s relaxed a bit now. We were all doing something new in the beginning, and now we’re all more comfortable.”

Three nights a week, the family has dinner in the dining hall, which the kids love, although Sara did point out that “the dining hall food is sometimes not that good.” But there is a soft-ice-cream machine, the students and the other faculty kids, about a dozen ranging in age from infancy to preteens. After dinner, Sara and Ben often visit the dorms, sometimes playing soccer or just hanging out with the older kids.

“One great feature of living here is having these great role models for the kids,” Jo-Anne said. “Although it is hard sometimes when they leave or graduate; Sara, in particular, misses them. And not all the interactions are smooth--sometimes the students can be a little too sharp, or a little too rough, and we have to find another way to talk to them, because the students aren’t our children, yet we are parenting them.”

Balancing work and family takes on new meaning when your work is 10 feet away. The previous night’s sleep, for example, had been shattered at 3 a.m. by a fire alarm, located just outside the Kingstones’ front door. A false alarm, as it turned out, but still it took a couple of hours before all the students, and Ben and Sara, were settled back into bed.

“A lot of things can happen that devour chunks of time,” Jim said. “A phone call from a parent, a student dropping by. You sit down to do an hour’s worth of paperwork, and suddenly it’s 9:15.”

Because of her schedule, Jo-Anne has to be very conscious of giving her own children enough of her undivided attention.

“I’ve had to learn not to answer the phone before their bedtime. We have to be very mindful of personal time,” she said.

Weekends provide some concentrated family time, although each faculty member is on call at least eight weekend days a year.

“We go to the beach, or go into town, or just play,” Jo-Anne said. “I think sometimes they get mad at how much time I spend with the students.”

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The entire family returns to Canada to visit relatives at least once a year, usually during the summer. Jo-Anne takes the whole summer off; Jim has begun teaching during Webb’s summer session, a melange of programs for children of all ages, which gives him the opportunity to work with younger kids.

“Just like boarding school isn’t for every student, it isn’t for every teacher,” said Jo-Anne. “But we love it because it gives you a chance to make a real difference in your students’ lives. If you’re dealing with a kid who isn’t doing well in class, you have the ability to find out what’s wrong. You can have an impact. That makes it worth the extra work.”

Mary McNamara can be reached by e-mail at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.