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.......

The Sun reports Mayor Bloomberg doesn't think Muslim holy days should become school holidays. His reason? "The truth of the matter is we need more children in school. More, not less." The topic comes up because City Councilman Robert Jackson, who is Muslim, has introduced a resolution requiring public schools take holidays on Eid Ul-Fitr and Eid Ul-Adha. Ten percent of the NYC school population is Muslim. Jackson argues that parents should have to decide......

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......

It wasn’t built on an old native burial ground, but two councilmen are up in arms over a Queens high school's location. The Department of Education failed to disclose that Information Technology High School in Long Island City, which opened in 2003, was built on the former location of the Gould Mercereau metal-plating warehouse – one apparently chock full of lead and petrochemicals. City Councilmen James Gennaro and Eric Gioia claim that the city exploited......

City Councilman Bill de Blasio, whose Brooklyn district covers Borough Park, Carroll Gardens, is asking the Department of Buildings to stop all of architect Robert Scarano's current projects. According to the Sun, DeBlasio says Scarano, who has hundreds of projects in various stages of progress, "should not be allowed to build while under investigation by the State Education Department for professional misconduct." It seems that one part of misconduct claim might due to the fact......

The public school year will end on a scandalous note. An aide at the prestigious Hunter College High School was arrested on charges of raping a 15-year-old student. Timothy Avery, a 25-year-old Staten Island resident, was charged with statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a child. The NY Times reports that "friends of the girl had expressed concerns about the girl’s behavior to school authorities." Laurel Wright-Hinckson, a spokeswoman for the city Education Department’s......

A lesson in quotas and school bureaucracy for an 11-year-old: The Post reoprts that Nikita Rau was denied a place at a magnet school because she's not white. Rau and her parents hoped she would attend Mark Twain School - IS 239, a magnet school in Coney Island (recently reported to have the best Math and English scores for Level 4 students) but a 33-year-old federal ruling is preventing her entry. The quotas for the......

Mayor Bloomberg himself said that "New York can't just sit back and hope for the best," when it comes to global warming. He was prompted by a report that showed the city responsible for 1% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. And while NYC lacks smoke-stack industry and a car-centric commuting culture, it is the city that never sleeps and never turns off its lights. 79% of New York's greenhouse gases are contributed by the......

Does anybody know what the legal age is to drive in New York State? Is it 17 or 18? Well, it depends on the situation. The minimum driving age in New York State (NYS) is 16, with a NYS learner permit. However, for drivers under the age of 18, the driving regulations get a bit sticky, and restrictions vary depending on where you live in NYS and the time of day you want to drive......

We don't know about you, but sometimes we find ourselves fascinated with the ways in which for-profit education works within the education community in general. Despite the large number of for-profit schools out there, unless something is going wrong they just don't get that much press, especially regarding their inner-workings. Which is why we're interested in keeping an eye on the recent troubles that have hit Technical Career Institutes (TCI) and its sister college Interboro......

This Thursday, World AIDS Day, sex education in New York's public schools will receive a politically charged facelift, the first major change to the curriculum in thirteen years. The major additions? Redesigned AIDS/HIV language and a better, more in-depth, discussion of the female condom. Fourth graders will now be told "HIV can be transmitted by sexual contact with an infected person. When you are older you will learn more," replacing the previous lesson which explained,......

It looks like the Statue of Liberty, which has been closed since September 11, 2001, will reopen later this summer. Mayor Bloomberg and government officials will make a formal announcement that most of the funding necessary has been raised (to improve security on Liberty Island) later today, but Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton did the morning talk show circuit, explaining visitors will be screened and be able to make reservations when they visit the......