Fast Start for the First Kid

Fun house or goldfish bowl? For the children of Presidents, the White House can be either one--or both. For Amy Carter, who at nine is the mansion's youngest resident since John F. Kennedy Jr. moved in with his parents at the age of two months in 1961, the first week seemed to balance out on the fun side.

Among the delights she found was the screening room, where she had Walt Disney's Freaky Friday run off for herself and a schoolmate, Claudia Sanchez, the daughter of a Chilean Embassy cook. There was also bowling in the basement alley, a snowball fight with her mother and brothers outside the Oval Office and a fast new friend: Grits, a mongrel puppy that was given to her by her new teacher Verona Meeder. After spending his first night on the pink rug in Amy's second-floor bedroom along with her cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang, Grits was moved to the kennel. Said one White House aide: "She really loves that dog."

That seemed to go for her new school too. By enrolling in 108-year-old Thaddeus Stevens Elementary, nine blocks from the White House, Amy became the first President's child to attend a Washington public school since Teddy Roosevelt's son Quentin in 1906. While that was another demonstration of the new First Family's egalitarian faith, it also thrust Amy even further into the public spotlight that seems increasingly to bother her. Arriving at the school door, Amy tugged unsmilingly at her mother's arm as she stopped to wave to the crowd of photographers. Amy, says Mrs. Carter's press secretary, Mary Hoyt, "is self-conscious around the press--she's learned to put her head down and go."

In her first day in her combined fourth-and fifth-grade class, Amy practiced handwriting, read Paul Reveres Ride and studied the relationship of inches, yards and meters. One of her classmates, Maurice Brown, reported that "she's real smart. That's because she writes real neat." Mrs. Meeder's ver dict was that Amy was "very unaffected, very natural, very independent. She just fit in beautifully." In Plains, she attended a predominantly black school, and Stevens has a similar racial mix. Of the 217 students, 60% are black and 30% are foreign born--mostly the children of employees at embassies, including those of India, Chile, Rumania and Pakistan.

The 14-room brick school has an "extended day" program enabling working parents to drop their children off as early as 7:30 a.m. and pick them up at 6 p.m. After regular classes, special instruction is provided in ballet, gymnastics, cooking and other fields. Amy stays late three days a week for Spanish lessons.

School officials are pleased at Amy's enrollment, though some have misgivings. Says Assistant Superintendent of

Schools Dorothy Johnson: "We're being tested. If Amy should ever decide to change her mind, the school system will bear the brunt."

Jimmy Carter has his own concerns.

Although Amy is a bright and happy child, to outsiders she sometimes seems, as a Washington Post editorial put it rather heavily, "forlorn--a baffled and beleaguered public figure." No more Amy press conferences, Jimmy ruled. Says Mary Hoyt: "For a while, she needs to get her feet on the ground and be treated like any other nine-year-old." As long as she does not follow Quentin Roosevelt's example, her privacy should be relatively safe. Arriving late one day for class, the story goes, Quentin disrupted his fellow students' work by singing and wildly waving his arms. For his misbehavior, school officials sent him home --where the White House butler opened the door for him.

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