"Next it'll be a heliport," said a member of the local land-use committee after the school's most recent remodel, which added two floors?"and 12,000 square feet?"to one of its four buildings, in order to better prepare students "for the exciting world they will inherit." Today Dalton; tomorrow the world itself. So it was a misstep when Jim Best, the head of school?"relatively new, and with a salary of $700,000?"said that Dalton parents couldn't have something they wanted. The school would not hold in-person classes in the fall. This might have gone over better if the other elite Manhattan schools were doing the same. But Trinity was opening. Ditto the fearsome girls' schools: Brearley, Nightingale-Bamford, Chapin, Spence.