Through letters he never sends to his abandoned wife, we learn that he first reinvented himself, earlier in life, in Copenhagen, where as a young man he waited on tables and cleaned classrooms.

Girls found smoking were made to spend three hours cleaning classrooms.

'The Board Designed the Schedule' "I think it's horrendous you're cleaning classrooms every other day and that windows are washed once a year," Mr. Holahan said.

For its first two decades, the school limped along, as Mr. Mandell, his wife and their two children, who lived above the school, spent weekends cleaning classrooms.

It urged that the board stop setting schedules for cleaning classrooms and cafeterias weekly, as well as for other work.

At Chhainsa, children clean their dormitories and classrooms and learn to cook.

One day she is accosted by Rafe Collins, an African American scholarship student who cleans classrooms at the end of the school day.

"The future is totally unclear for me now," she said, standing in the courtyard of the school as girls buzzed behind her, busily cleaning classrooms.

At most Ivy League campuses, organized groups of students have demanded better treatment of the workers who prepare their meals, tend their grounds and clean their dorms and classrooms.

The directives include not cleaning classrooms and not staying after school hours for extracurricular activities.