Mayor Bloomberg has no problem cutting school budgets. After all, since kids are being schooled in trailers and closets anyway. how much worse can things get?

But Tweed said 110 million would be cuts to schools, while 70 million would be cut from the bureaucracy upstairs. But it appears that's not true:

As it turns out, most of the cuts aren't cuts at all, but recalculations of what things actually cost. Only $15 million is really being cut from headquarters.

After all, there's important stuff happening at headquarters. There are meetings, and conferences, and gala luncheons to attend to. These things are absolutely necessary, and kids must be crammed into every available space like so many sardines so that we can enable these important functions.

And as for those who'd criticize Tweed for misrepresenting the facts, they're just ill-informed. When they said they were cutting 70 million, they meant they were cutting 15 million. Just like when Mayor Bloomberg said he'd get rid of trailers by 2012. What he meant, of course, was that he wouldn't get rid of them by 2012.

Those pesky parents and children are just gonna have to learn what it means to trim the fat. In any case, the city can't just throw around money educating children. After all, it's got an 80-million-dollar computer system to pay for.

Related: The NYC Parents Blog comments on the Bloomberg budget cuts.

The NY Daily News reports that students at Bronx Little School have to share one bathroom for both boys and girls.

Over the summer, the Department of Education began remodeling work on the girls' bathroom.

The boys' bathroom has become a unisex bathroom for both boys and girls

As a result, teachers have to take boys and girls to the bathroom in separate shifts.

Some students in the pre-K to fifth grade school, unable to wait for teachers to take them to the bathroom, suffer accidents in the classroom.

Parents have begun sending kids off to school with book bags, lunch boxes and extra pants to change into after they soil themselves.

Parents want to know why the bathroom is being remodeled during the school year instead of the summer.

Principal Janice Gordon said through a DOE spokesman that parents were overstating the number of bathroom accidents and the school keeps extra clothes around anyway just in case young students have accidents.

Plus two regular bathroom breaks are scheduled throughout the 6 hour school day and kids ought to be able to hold it until those regularly scheduled breaks.

After reading yesterday's cover story about Mayor Bloomberg's life in Newsweek, I suspect the mayor is less than sympathetic to kids who don't have the willpower to keep from going to the bathroom.

In the Newsweek article, Jon Meacham writes about how Mayor Bloomberg learned valuable lessons growing up as a little Jewish boy among a bunch of Boston hooligans and anti-Semites who used to be mean to him.

From this tough upbringing, the mayor learned self-reliance, determination, ambition, and direction.

He also learned how to hold it when the Boston toughs wouldn't let him use the school bathroom without paying for it.

The kids at Boston Little School really should feel special.

Like Mayor Bloomberg got when he was a kid, they're getting very valuable lessons in self-reliance, determination, ambition, direction, and of course how to hold for hours at a time when you gotta go.

So take that, parents of Boston Little School students.

This has been a teachable moment for your kids.

And who knows better about teachable moments than Mayor Bloomberg and his newly reorganized Department of Education.

One of the biggest draws in real estate is a good school. One person who knows that very well is Hillary Blumenthal-Levy. She paid 1.16 million dollars for a three bedroom co-op in Manhattan, and neglected to budget for private school. It didn't seem necessary, since both her real estate agent and the Department of Education website said her sons would be guaranteed access to PS 290.

Turns out, though, she's on the wrong side of the street, and the website was incorrect. She's suing the broker, claiming she specifically requested a place zoned for this school.

The Education Department acknowledges that a function on its Web site allowing people to determine school zones by entering an address is not able to give accurate information when the home is on a street that divides one zone from the next.

"We are working hard to address this issue, and we have included a disclaimer on our Web page," department spokeswoman Debra Wexler said in a statement. "If parents are looking at school zones as a factor when buying a home, we strongly encourage them to contact either the school or our Office of School Enrollment Planning and Operations before making a decision."

Wexler added that Blumenthal-Levy's apartment on the north side of E. 87th St. is in a "lottery" zone where kids are placed in upper East Side schools that include PS 6 and PS 290.

In a city where a highly rated public school can bump up a neighborhood's real estate prices, brokers will be stunned to learn that the Web site they count on for school-zone information isn't always accurate, said Della Leathers of Prudential Douglas Elliman. "This is pretty scary," she said. "I would have thought you'd be pretty safe relying on the Department of Education."

Welcome to Mr. Bloomberg's New York, Ms. Blumenthal-Levy

Mr. Greenblatt couldn't help but notice that after he heard the sneeze, there were copious amounts of blood on Jose's desk. Jose had somehow bit his tongue while sneezing, and deeply. Fortunately the nurse's office was right across the hall.

"Jose," he ordered, "Go straight to the medical office."

A moment later Jose returned. "She wanth a path, Mithter Greenblatt."

Mr. Greenblatt scoured his bag for the requisite medical pass. He couldn't find one. He quickly scribbled something on a piece of paper and sent Jose back. But a moment later Jose returned, still bleeding.

"She wanth a medical path, Mithter."

Mr. Greenblatt was not happy. He sent Jose across the hall with a note written with his dry erase marker proclaiming the following, in block letters:


Jenny the nurse (who was actually not a nurse but a paraprofessional) found this beyond the pale. She got up from her desk and went over to give that Greenblatt guy a piece of her mind. Since he had no manners, she figured she'd walk right into his classroom, and that's just what she did.

"How dare you address me like that! In all my years in that office, I've never had anyone speak to me like that. Is it my fault if you can't keep a stock of medical room passes? You should be ashamed of yourself!"

She contemptuously tossed a pad full of passes onto Mr. Greenblatt's desk. Mr. Greenblatt filled one out, sent Jose to the medical office, and moments later Jose was in an ambulance, on his way to get that tongue looked at.

cross-posted to Kitchen Table Math