Rich Conroy is the Bicycle Education Program Director at Bike New York, a cycling safety and education group in New York City and the organizer of the 5 Boro Bike Tour (which occurred this past weekend). Rich and the people he works with are not bike advocates--they leave political action to others and focus on the practical safety of being a cyclist in the city. The group conducts clinics to teach kids to ride bikes,......

The 144,160 parking placards registered in the city inventory have been reduced by over 25,000, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced yesterday. The cutbacks are targeted at what many frustrated drivers see as an abuse of a system that lets police, teachers and civil servants park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. Initial cuts have focused on the 80,770 placards issued to 68 city agencies, exempting the 63,390 placards used by the Education Department.......

As of yesterday, sideshow school was in session by the seashore. Lasting only one week, Sideshow 101 introduces the student to "Fire Eating, Snake Charming, The Human Blockhead, Sword Swallowing, Magic and More," according to the school's website. The Daily News checked in with some of the students, who ran away from their own lives to join the circus for the week -- some from as far away as Oklahoma City.They started by jamming nails......

Last night, the Panel for Educational Policy voted to approve, in an 11-1 vote, the end of social promotion for eighth graders in public schools. This means eighth graders who fail core classes or do poorly on standardized test will not be able to move onto high school. The board is made up of eight appointees (there are currently one seven) from Mayor Bloomberg and one from each borough president; Manhattan representative Patrick Sullivan dissented,......

Turns out the number parking placards sloshing around New York is over 142,000, twice the number guesstimated by Mayor Bloomberg’s office when he announced a 20% cutback on the placards, which allow police, teachers and civil servants to park for free at meters and many off-limits areas. The new total does not take into consideration the number of counterfeit and expired placards, and the city is still not done counting, so this preliminary total is......

Last month, a Queens kindergartener was handcuffed after a temper tantrum at PS 81, prompting his parents to threaten a lawsuit. Now a lawyer representing Dennis Rivera and his parents reveals they are filing a notice of claim against the city for $15 million. According to the notice, Rivera, who the Daily News reports as suffering from "speech problems, attention deficit disorder and asthma," suffered injuries to his wrists as well as psychological and emotional......

After a parents of a rejected student filed a class action lawsuit, the Department of Education asked a federal judge to overturn a 1974 ruling that set in place quotas to keep the school 40% minority and 60% white. The DOE wants the court to overturn the ruling immediately so the 2008-2009 will be quota-free. Last June, 11-year-old Nikita Rau was denied a place at Coney Island magnet school, Mark Twain School - IS 239.......

How do you get rid of an unwanted fire truck? Simple, put it on Craigslist! That is exactly what the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) did with an unused 1993 Pierce aerial platform truck they inherited from the Coast Guard when the city-state agency took control over Governors Island in 2003. They got over $75,000 from the East Prospect Fire Company in York County, Pennsylvania near Lancaster. That is a pretty good deal......

Video of "Meat and You: Partners in Freedom" from The Simpsons episode, Lisa the Vegetarian After the Humane Society revealed a tape of mistreatment of cows at the nation's "No. 2 supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program," burgers and other beef products were temporarily yanked off NYC schools' menus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had put an "administrative hold" on all products from Hallmark Meat Packing Packing in Chino, CA......

Two members of a three-judge federal appellate court panel took the city to task yesterday for removing the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Debbie Almontaser, who helped found the dual-language school with an emphasis on Arab culture, stepped down before the school opened last fall, after controversy over remarks she made in the NY Post. Last summer, Almontaser had commented on t-shirts with "intifada" printed on them, made by a youth group she......

Mayor Bloomberg presented the preliminary 2008-2009 fiscal year budget which inclued cuts to almost every city agency, saying, "Everyone is going to have to tighten their belts." One big reason is the slowing economy and its effects on the city; for instance, the city had previously thought Wall Street profits would be $16.8 billion last year but they are more likely to be $2.8 billion. The Daily Politics noticed the presentation had three pages......

THEATER: We saw Fiona Shaw in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days on Saturday and highly recommend it. Shaw is mesmerizing in her performance as Winnie, crystallizing in her 90-minute virtuoso performance all the desperation, self-delusion and absurdity of an entire lifetime. (Her little-seen costar Tim Potter is also a hoot as Willie.) The production is as bitterly funny as it is affecting, and, as a metaphor, the blasted landscape that devours Winnie is as potent as......

One of the Stuyvesant High School students seriously injured in last Saturday's Vermont van crash has returned home to New York. Junior Lucia Hsiao, a member of the girls' junior varsity track team, had suffered serious neck injuries but was able to "gingerly walk" to her room on her own. The Staten Island resident is wearing a halo around her head and will require a lot of rehab, but her dad said, "It could have......

As the Stuyvesant community remains concerned over the health of two students and a coach who were seriously injured after a track team van crash, it now seems that the trip was not authorized by the school. The girls' junior varsity track team was headed to New Hampshire for the Dartmouth relays when their van hit a median and rolled over. Drivers passing by helped to hold the van so it would stop rolling......

There's a great NY Times article about the overcrowding at Richmond High School in Queens. The building was meant for 1,800 students, but 3,600 students attend the school. How is that possible? Well, there are 22 trailers "encased within chain-link fencing, occupy the school’s former yard, evoking the ambience of the Port Elizabeth container-ship terminal." Ha! Given that Mayor Bloomberg keeps touting his success with the school system, it's interesting to hear about Richmond Hill.......

Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers. Teachers union president Randi Weingarten sent Mayor Bloomberg a letter to call the permit limits"deeply disturbing." Weingarten complains that teachers actually have too few permits. United Federation of Teachers vice-president Michael Mulgrew told the Sun that teachers end up making "informal deals"......

It’s that time of year again when New Yorkers debate how much to tip the – deep breath – doorman, super, handyman, locker room attendant, trainer, baby sitter, dog walker, beauty salon, cleaning person, day care center, garbage collector, mail carrier, paperboy and parking attendant(s). Sewell Chan, the Times’s Man on the Web, has tied himself to the tipping post with a 1,780 word monograph on the subject, largely sourced from Doorman, a book by......

Yesterday, the Daily News revealed that an East Harlem high school principal told teachers to effectively pass more students. Principal Bennett Lieberman's report card stated: "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities. You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional...most of our students ... have difficult home lives,......

The NY Times is reporting that the Nets won't be playing in Brooklyn for the 2009-2010 season because the arena won't be finished until 2010. The Times attributes the delay to legal challenges. The most publicized lawsuit is the federal case brought by 13 property owners and tenants. The suit alleges that the taking of their property via eminent domain was unconstitutional. In June, a US District Court judge dismissed the case, finding that......

Gross! A former assistant principal at I.S. 72 in Staten Island is accused of asking a 12-year-old student for massages - and then trying to buy her and her mother's silence with promises of private school payment! Lawrence Siegel was put in a district office job - not his usual gig at Rocco Laurie Intermediate School - while the Department of Education investigated him after a DOE parent support coordinator, per the Staten Island Advance,......

Freaked out about the explosions in your neighborhood, only to find out via 311 that it's just fireworks? Or wondering about the fire around the corner? Well, the city actually does want you to know about what's going on in your neighborhoods and announced the pilot program launch of Notify NYC, which will deliver "emergency public information by email, text messages and reverse-911 alerts in four City community districts." The four districts are Lower Manhattan,......

Senator Barack Obama might be back in Iowa on the campaign trail, but New Yorkers are still buzzing over his coffee - and bacon and eggs and toast - klatsch with Mayor Bloomberg on Friday morning. The meeting was supposedly caught Senator Hillary Clinton off guard - and not just because it was two blocks away from her midtown offices. Bloomberg's press secretary Stu Loeser said Bloomberg wanted to talk national policy with Obama,......

Today is a citywide "Day Out Against Hate." City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Reverend Al Sharpton have spearheaded the event, which was prompted by a number of disturbing hate crime incidents, from swastikas in Brooklyn Heights to a noose found at the Columbia University campus. The Politicker was at one of the events this morning, where Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz "suggested, rather strongly, that city public school students be required to make......

Homework can be added to the grand list of things that City Council member Peter Vallone is not so fond of. (That list includes graffitti, peeping toms, Con Ed, and pit bulls so far.) The other day, he said he wanted to introduce a cap on elementary school homework - 2 1/2 hours each day, plus one homework-free night a week. Pshaw, a homework-free night? That's called Friday! Vallone explained, "There is no study that......

The Department of Education is charging a temp with stealing $50,000 in fake overtime. The tip off? When Tyrone Avila would claim he was working 85 hours a week - when he really supposed to work less than 40 hours a week. The Daily News reports that Avila had been temping as budget analyst for the DOE since 2001, but "he didn't start padding his time sheets until 2005 when his mother-in-law developed mental problems......

City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein characterized last year's assessment test scores as "good," but critics say that they represent a lack of progress and a failure of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to reform city schools. City kids' scores stayed flat on national assessment exams in math and reading, with a slight improvement in 4th graders' math scores and a drop in 8th graders' reading scores. "New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in......

The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual salary survey of the heads of educational institutions and the value of a college education is evidenced in the paychecks being cashed by institutions' presidents. More than a dozen heads of private universities took home more than $1 million during the 2005-06 school year. According to the New York Post, the dean of higher earning was Donald Ross, who took home $5.7 million--most in deferred compensation after......

What is it about Frank Gehry? When The Boston Globe reported this week that the architect (and a construction firm) is being sued by MIT, news organizations from Kansas City to Dublin reported the story. Does Gehry have a building in KC, too? Apparently, not, but he raised controversy there over an arena bid. Sound familiar?! The university filed a negligence and breach of contract suit, alleging design flaws in the $300 million Stata Center......

Kudos to The Real Deal for coaxing DUMBO-based designer Robert Scarano out of the shadows. One of the city's most reviled architects, Scarano has been scrutinized by Department of Buildings for his safety and zoning violations. Following a summer outcry, the agency issued stop-work orders on some Scarano sites. He's even being investigated by the NYS Department of Education, which oversees licensed architects, but there is currently no record of disciplinary action. Overseeing a whopping......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein released the "first-ever" public school progress reports with letter grades. The reports are meant to give educators and parents a snapshot of how well schools are doing and empower them to keep improving. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With these Progress Reports, parents no longer have to navigate a maze of statistics to determine how their child's school is doing and how it compares to others. And our educators now......