With the administrative and academic shakeup at my sons' school during the past month, about 2/3rds of my five-year-old's kindergarten class is heading elsewhere for first grade this fall.

For about only 1/3 of those students, it was their parents' plan before all of these changes went down. So, another 1/3 have been alienated enough to switch schools this late in the application process, when most acceptance letters and commitments are made by February at the latest. All the recruitment the school has achieved in the past two to three years has been undone in the past month. I'm not sure how the school can face that reality without some genuine concern.

There's talk of a single first grade class. I mean, a single "homeroom", if you will.

At first blush, moving my boys to another private school would be a considerable effort.

Princeton schools are 45 minutes away and practically out of our price range, $15,000 / year and up.

One woman is sending her daughter to Ranney in Tinton Falls, 45 minutes away in the other direction, towards the shore. Tuition there is $22,000 / year. I had to ask her, since the cost is about triple what we are paying, how she could swing that. Since she is divorced (and remarried), her ex-husband puts up half. Her gifted daughter is worth it, she contends.

The price is prohibitive, in my opinion, but the commute is more so. I mean, sure, I don't want to go into debt in order to finance my sons' elementary school education. It's tempting, especially since I think my older boy is "gifted" as well (what mother doesn't?).

But, at some point, I simply must decline to join the rat race and refuse to keep up with the Joneses. I'm troubled by the thought that broken homes are contributing to a family's "ability to pay" more for things, including private education. With two or three or four working parents chipping in, how can families with one working parent compete? Like so many things, we are priced right out.

I take comfort from the realization, as I'm poring over toy catalogues from FAO Schwartz and the like which present outdoor playhouses for little girls or gas-powered toy sports cars for boys, each running several thousand dollars, that even though it may seem as if only millionaires can afford such playthings, millionaires got that way from being prudent purchasers.

Or, perhaps they won the lottery! My husband is a gambling man; he plays for us, all the while investing in Halliburton. Two things I have scruples about.

Well, anyway, the pragmatist in me likes to believe that millionaires result from financial conservatism. You millionaires who read this blog, let me know if I'm right.