Kids Take Over City

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

March 6 -- Imagine a city where there are no fights, no thefts, no bankruptcies, no homeless, the rent is $25, the authorities always give warnings before leveling fines, city council meetings are fun and the business permit process is fast. And, oh yeah, the mayor is eight years old and there is a store that sells wishes.

Welcome to Kidopolis, Santa Monica, a city created, governed, and populated by Third Graders. The city exists within the Franklin Middle School class of Ms. Lisa Bartoli, who for the past seven years has taken an innovate approach to the civics requirement of the class curriculum.

A city constructed out of cardboard, sparkly Elmer’s glue and a lot of imagination, Kidopolis held its fifth public opening of the year last Wednesday night, “tourist night,” where parents were invited to meet the officials of the town and shop from the businesses created by its prepubescent inhabitants.

It was a busy day in Kidopolis. The mayor, peering through a whiteboard miniature façade of City Hall, on Awesome Road, cheerfully greeted the visitors, as dozens of little hands in the 20 colorfully decorated cardboard storefronts on Super Street and Golden Road busily broke change and scribbled receipts for customers.

“We call it tourist night because it’s the night they make the most money,” said Bartoli, handing $25 of Kidopolis cash to incoming parents, who all kicked in an equal amount in grown-up money start-up funds for the businesses, saying “spend, spend, spend.”

“We have a revenue of about $1,500 of Kidopolis money floating through here this evening,” Bartoli said. “Tomorrow they can use the Kidopolis money they earned to buy products from one another in the other cities.” There are now five other “class cities.”

The merchandise, including dolls, designer lunch bags and wishes, were conceived and handmade by the students, who first had to get their business proposal approved by the Kidopolis city council, pay rent for the retail space and consider buying health and property insurance before opening shop. But that’s just the beginning.

The Kidopolis community has its own chief of police, fire department, bank, environmental defender, city council, mayor, laws, and a city supervisor, who is Ms. Bartoli. They have bank accounts, pay taxes, hold secret ballot elections, give speeches, vote, advertise in the local newspaper and hold meetings to settle business and civic disputes.

Under Bartoli’s guidance, they learn to do all this in less than two months, while meeting all their other more bookish learning requirements. Although Bartoli did not create the program, she did embellish its dimensions and was among the first to introduce it to Franklin.

“I created the laws (for the city),” she said. “They’re just our classroom laws but now we call them something else. I say don’t run in class, they call it ‘speeding,’ littering is littering. They’re an incredible community, they usually give warnings and say please don’t do that again,” before giving a ticket.

Sitting smiling in a storefront with an oversize red plastic fire helmet on, Chelsea, a precocious eight-year-old with big blue eyes and strawberry blond hair who doubles as fire chief and the owner of Chelsea’s Designer Lunch Bag Shop, explained how justice is meted out in Kidopolis.

At city council meetings “we talk about arguments. Like tickets, if they speed. Like if you leave a sweatshirt on the floor, and we need to get out of a fire (in a drill), then that’s basically a fire hazard. Tickets are $15 first time, $20 after that, and they keep going up. We give warnings. One warning,” she said matter-of-fact.

Lynn Barndwein, Chelsea’s mother, said she loved the new approach because it teaches kids about how the real world operates, about “the art of the deal,” the value of money and making choices. “I think it’s fantastic. Ms Bartoli is it, she’s very forward thinking.”

“They’re learning the art of the deal,” said Barndwein, pointing out Chelsea’s salesmanship in prominently displaying her decorated lunch bags after noting her competitor’s understated storefront, and using phrases like ‘thank you, come again.’

“Some of them have discounted their merchandise” since the last open city, said Barndwein. “They’re seeing what the market will bear and they’re adjusting their prices accordingly.

“I think they need to learn the value of money,” she added. “I don’t think there is enough emphasis on the value of money and business concepts (in schools). Children can learn that you can come up with ideas, and a lot of creative ideas are squelched in the school system, unfortunately. (Through this program) they learn to make choices.”

Cultivating decision-making skills, especially within a community environment, is a central goal of the program, said Bartoli. “It’s quite empowering, because they get to make all the decisions. They have to do the brainstorming and problem-solving.”

One example of individual problem-solving was illustrated by the owner of the Shooting Star Wishes store, where for between $2 and $3 a customer could purchase a pre-made wish to be a “princess” or a “famous basketball player” written on a decorated, handmade star or write one of their own to hang up and wish upon on their wall.

The wish store wasn’t doing too good. Wishing to solve the problem by the next “sell day” the student created an incentive, where with every purchase the costumer could enter a raffle to win a free wish at the end of the businesses day. His wish came true, and business picked up.

For collective problem-solving, Bartoli cited an incident where one of the children lost a purchased item and asked for a free replacement from the store. A meeting was held. Some children said the product should be replaced for free, while others said it wasn’t the store’s responsibility, and another suggested a 50 percent discount on the replacement.

“So you see the different levels we’re at,” Bartoli said. “But it’s all fine. Whatever they decide to do is fine with me. I have no judgment on it. I have hands off, I just wander around and let it happen.”

Nonintervention in the child’s self-governance is critical to the growth process, said Bartoli, who advises parents to abstain from it at home during the business brainstorming period.

“The child needs to get their self-esteem from what they do, not from somebody saying this is a better idea,” she said.

Marco Innocenti, a parent from Naples, Italy who is a creative consultant in the fashion industry, was apprehensive at first about a public school drilling the fundamental principles of capitalism into the heads of third graders.

“First time I heard about this concept, I thought, ‘Typical Americans, they have to do something regarding money,’” Innocenti said. “But later I realize what was behind it.”

The program, Innocenti realized, is “wonderful” because it introduces children early on to the two often conflicting but equally vital sides of life that the world will later demand them to balance: creativity and practicality.

“My daughter (Sophie) doesn’t talk about the money, she talked about the joy of creating something, of making a product that was really selling,” he said. “This is the best thing a public school can do. They’re going to learn it in the world anyhow. I’m a firm believer that it is better to learn this in a good way than the hard way. This is a fun operation.”

Sophie, 9, agreed with her dad. “It’s fun. I enjoyed doing it. I learned about real business and how it’s going works, and that people may be rude.”

As Sophie pointed out, fun is not the only reality in Kidopolis. Decision-making encourages risk-taking, which doesn’t always result in a fun outcome, Bartoli said. But learning to cope with failure, she added, is equally critical to the growth process.

“I have learned that if I set the bar here,” she said suspending her flattened hand in midair, “they will reach that. I need them to take risks and let them go through feeling failure and success because both are critical.

“I’m not going to hold their hand through the process,” Bartoli said. “I’m just here to catch them if they fall. In order to grow and become independent that’s what they need.”

No business has gone bankrupt, but there have been failures. One year, a child’s desk- washing business was forced to shut its cardboard doors after the first week when the other students realized it wasn’t worth their hard earned money to buy a service, which while cool, was something they could do for themselves.

He was forced to create a new proposal. “He sat there the whole time in tears. It was very hard, but I could not rescue that child, because then what did they learn? It was very painful.”

The city council had a meeting, as they do after every sell day, and probed the student about what he thought went wrong, and then with collective friendly suggestions helped him come up with a new idea.

“I’m here to help him go through the tears, go through the upset, and become stronger from it,” Bartoli said. “That’s my job. If I could do that, I consider myself very fortunate.”

No tears were flowing in Kidopolis at the end of the city’s last opening. The city emptied of tourists and the florescent lights darkened over little “closed” signs dangling on the cardboard storefronts.

After a hard day of governing and mastering market forces it was time to go home; it was almost past bedtime.