The budget dance between City Hall and the City Council is underway, and Monday night a group of parents and children held a rally against proposed cuts that could wipe out an after-school program at Pomonok Houses. Comment.

The newest advertisements showed children with clocks covering their eyes below the slogan, “It’s 9 a.m. Do you know where your kids are?” Comment.

City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott took a victory lap around the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College Monday morning after the Jamaica school was recognized as one of the best in the country by U.S. News & World Report last week. Comments (2).

They won $2,500 for their school and never had to make a sound. Comment.

Jumping into the job pool is all about overcoming challenges, St. John’s University head basketball Coach Steve Lavin told graduates at the university’s commencement speech Sunday, and tackling adversity is something he knows a thing or two about. Comment.

The seven Queens schools that the city Panel for Educational Policy voted to close were given new names last week, but two western Queens legislators said they were more concerned with the future results of the closure. Comment.

Certain Whitestone students have been rummaging through garbage cans and ransacking the cupboards of extended families to help fund a playground at their school, finding thousands of dollars most people mistake as trash. Comment.

From my first day of school, when my mother brought me to the building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I had drilled into me by my parents that teachers were supreme. You did not question or show disrespect to them. Comment.

At the moment it appears the only hope for stopping the city Department of Education from closing August Martin High School and 23 other schools is intervention by the courts. Comment.

The Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Long Island City has been named the best high school in New York state by U.S. News & World Report. Comments (1).

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) visited the North Queensview Homes Co-Op in Astoria last week, taking the time to talk about the ongoing city budget process, the school system and a reported beef with Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria). Comment.

Time is running out for lawmakers to pass the New York Dream Act before the summer break, according to community activists who rallied in front of Queen Borough Hall Monday. Comment.

The city Department of Education’s agenda to shutter schools has drawn fierce oppositions from communities throughout the borough. Comment.

Before the city Panel for Educational Policy decided to close August Martin HS and six others in Queens, a representative from state Sen. Shirley Huntley’s (D-Jamaica) office blasted the panel for the way the city Department of Education removed the principal of Martin last month. Comment.

Northeast Queens educators and civic leaders were deflated after the city’s plan to close Flushing High School was approved at a hearing last week. Comment.

The city Panel for Educational Policy’s decision to close 24 city schools drew the ire of advocates long after the votes were cast. Comment.

Western Queens officials were disheartened and angry after the city Panel for Educational Policy voted last week to close three high schools in the area. Comments (1).

Grover Cleveland High School was saved from the chopping block with only hours to spare last week before the city Panel for Educational Policy was set to vote on the city Department of Education’s plan to close 26 city schools, including eight from Queens. Comment.

It was just another day to some of the students passing through Queensborough Community College last Thursday. Comment.

City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) and members of the PS 11 family called upon the city School Construction Authority to make the expansion of the school a priority once again. Comment.

The city Department of Education is hoping to take advantage of an opportunity to place a new primary school in St. Albans, but District 29 community members say what they really need is a new high school. Comment.

Regretfully, the city Department of Education has been making sudden changes every few months for the past 10 years. In the past there was stability in city schools, but these days there is confusing change after change. Comment.

The people living in western Queens are rightly angry. Following its unpopular “turnaround” model, the city Department of Education is planning to close Long Island City High School and put another high school with some fancy name in its place. Comment.

With all the talk that education is so important in this country, it is time that teachers who teach in schools throughout America be treated with the courtesy and professionalism they deserve. Comment.

TimesLedger Newspapers will be reporting from the Panel for Educational Policy meeting in Brooklyn Thursday night. The fate of seven Queens high schools will be decided when the panel votes. Comment.

Grover Cleveland High School was saved from the chopping block with only hours to spare before the Panel for Educational Policy was set to vote Thursday evening on the Department of Education’s plan to close 26 city schools, including eight from Queens. Comment.

One sign read, “We need a place to meet. Don’t put us in the street.” Not far away in a crowd of middle-school students, parents and school officials, another sign read, “Don’t kick us when we’re down.” Comment.

Hundreds rallied on the steps of Borough Hall last Thursday as the final dismissal bell loomed for after-school programs facing budget cuts. Comments (1).

Many teachers, residents and parents were convinced that the public hearing on the city Department of Education’s plan to close Flushing High School last week was simply a formality. Comment.

The city was scheduled to decide the fate of eight Queens high schools at a public meeting in Brooklyn this Thursday evening. Comment.

The city Department of Education is supposed to be considering public input on whether or not to close Flushing High School and reopen it under a different name, but the department is introducing its proposed principal for the replacement school before a vote is even taken. Comment.

It’s been a long journey for 44-year-old Jamaica native Charlene Harper. Comment.

The city recently announced devastating plans to cut funds to Beacon programs, school-based community centers serving children, youth and adults. There are 80 Beacons throughout New York City and they operate in the afternoons and evenings, on weekends, during school holidays and vacation periods and during the summer. Comment.

Believing that there was a great need for something new, Allen Kinard, decided to start a nonprofit organization that gave every student in a public school the opportunity to enhance their education and extracurricular endeavors. Comment.

Turning 5 years old never seemed so tricky. Comment.

Communications company AT&T visited Long Island City’s Academy of Finance and Enterprise earlier this month to give a $110,000 check to the nonprofit Junior Achievement of New York. Comment.

City teachers might be as anxious as their students to make the grade now that public school teacher evaluations are public , but one retired Bayside teacher said making the report cards available online was an unfair and unnecessary measure. Comment.

There may have been actors, but there wasn’t any script. Students posing as GOP hopefuls for the Republican presidential nomination exhibited their skills last Thursday when the Queensborough Community College mock trial team faced off on the issues. Comment.

The issue of ease of transferring credits within the City University of New York has long been a vexing problem for faculty and students, especially for community colleges, such as LaGuardia or Queensborough, to senior colleges, such as York or Queens. Comment.

The city has nixed a plan to move a successful new Hollis high school into a space community members said would have been a poor fit. Comment.

College Point middle schoolers will have yellow bus service restored in the fall now that a bill has passed the state Legislature, lawmakers said. Comments (1).

The city Department of Education got an earful from Grover Cleveland High School advocates at a closure hearing Monday. Comment.

With a classroom that holds up to 15 students, PS 33 in Queens Village is now the new home to the Reading Partners program. Comment.

For a team of competitors from Long Island City High School, developing the perfect basketball shot is all about mastering the mechanics. Comment.

Let me start by saying I was a high school mathematics teacher for 37 years, so I speak from experience. Comments (1).

A new $2,000 grant has helped one Little Neck school get in gear as it continues to prepare special needs students for real-world job opportunities. Comments (1).

As Michael Bloomberg reaches his 10th year as mayor, he continues in his well-meaning but flawed policy of closing most of our high schools. It seems he wants to close most of the high schools in Queens in spite of their traditions and histories. Comments (1).

City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) convened a meeting of his colleagues from the Queens delegation last Thursday in Forest Hills, where they called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to drop his plan to close eight borough high schools at the end of the academic year and open new schools in their places for 2012-13 school year. Comment.

The popular literacy program at the Rochdale Village branch of the Queens Library that has helped expand opportunities for adults is itself about to get a lot more room to grow. Comment.

Despite criticism, the city Department of Education is moving forward with its plan to close “struggling” neighborhood schools and reopen them in the same building with new names. Comment.

Despite criticism, the city Department of Education is moving forward with its plan to close “struggling” neighborhood schools and reopen them in the same building with new names. Comment.

In Bob Friedrich’s March 1-7 On Point column “Underperforming Queens schools should be shuttered,” the author misses the point about the objections to the extreme emphasis on standardized test preparation in our local public schools. Comments (1).

Community District Education Council 30 held a meeting on the upcoming middle and high school to be built in Hunters Point, but many of the parents of younger children were more concerned about the future of PS 78, the school where the meeting was held. Comment.

In 2001, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made it known he was going to take steps to abolish the city Board of Education and take it over himself and run it with the assistance of an appointed city schools chancellor. Comment.

The furniture inside the 75-year-old library at the Campus Magnet Complex in Cambria Heights used to be in such poor condition the librarians would record videos of themselves rocking back and forth in wobbly-legged chairs when applying for grants. Comments (1).

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew may have just gone through a rough few days following the publication of teacher data reports, but on Leap Day he said there were only 22 months and one day left in the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom he criticized for 10 years of mismanagement of the city’s schools. Comments (2).

The city Department of Education has announced plans to close two struggling Queens high schools, and more of the same was expected for the borough’s other six lowest performing high schools. Comment.

Amid a struggle with its teachers union, the city Department of Education has announced plans to close Astoria’s William Cullen Bryant High School, a move western Queens lawmakers have criticized as politically motivated and destructive. Comments (16).

He is one of the best teachers in the country, but when Rafal Olechowski was awarded a prestigious grant last Thursday, his face was one of utter shock. Comment.

How do you measure the value of a teacher? Comment.

Elected officials and members of the teachers union protested the mayor’s plan to close Flushing HS Friday, a plan Mayor Michael Bloomberg said will get rid of bad teachers immediately instead of letting them linger in the struggling institution. Comment.

Those who start as U.S. Transportation Security Administration officials only need high school diplomas, but at LaGuardia Community College Friday, 50 agency employees from Queens’ two airports completed the first step toward furthering their education and careers. Comments (1).

A deal has been reached that will create a fair process for evaluating teachers in state public schools. The deal, to be an amendment in the state budget, will ensure that New York receives more than $1 billion in federal funding that was contingent upon an agreement. Comments (1).

Jamaica’s Allen Christian School, which opened its doors in 1982, will be closing due to financial difficulties. Comment.

Praise rang out from Albany last week as state education officials and the state teacher’s union inked an 11th-hour deal on a teacher evaluation system, but closer to home the fate of some of Queens’ lowest-performing schools is still uncertain. Comment.

While the first phase of the applied sciences campus coming to Roosevelt Island, now called the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute, will not be done until 2017, the institution now has a provost and dean. Comment.

City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) announced Friday the city Department of Education and city School Construction Authority had agreed to purchase four lots to build a 440-seat school in Woodside. Comment.

At a town hall meeting in Oakland Gardens last week, city Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott discussed topics such as parent involvement and overcrowding with a packed auditorium at MS 74. Community Education Council 26 President Jeanette Segal reminded those who had come to meet the city’s top education official of Feb. 15, that the week of Feb. 13-17 had been designated Respect for All Week and asked that “we all fully engage this initiative tonight.” “I know lately it’s been a back-and-forth confrontation,” Walcott said, acknowledging the recent public ire over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education policies. Comment.

St. John’s University has chosen to stay out of the debate over whether religious institutions should be required to provide contraceptives to their employees, but students at the Queens school have not remained as silent. Comment.

The Queensboro Hill branch of the Queens Public Library, at 60-05 Main St. in Flushing, will close Feb. 24 for renovations that are not set to be completed for about a year. Comment.

The developer of the next hit mobile application may not be a Silicon Valley programmer, but a group of Grover Cleveland High School seniors. Comment.

College Point residents have repeatedly voiced their desire to have a middle school in the isolated neighborhood, but members of the city Department of Education have said in recent meetings that the statistics do not necessarily support a new building. Comments (17).

The PS 98 PTA’s annual spring fund-raiser will include all the things one would expect from an evening themed “Casino Royale”: craps, Black Jack, Texas Hold ’em, booze — everything, that is, except for the “G” word. Comment.

A crowd of 2,000 angry people packed the Brooklyn Tech High School auditorium to send a message to the city Panel for Education Policy that the people are opposed to the mayor’s plan to close 23 schools. Comment.

Spurred by the announcement that eight persistently low-achieving high schools in the borough would be given the turnaround model, the Queens High School Presidents Council held a breakfast and presentation in Flushing Friday refuting the city’s education policies. Comment.

CUNY School of Law in Flushing has made some policy changes in response to statistics showing only 63 percent of its students passed their first bar exam last summer, the lowest percentage in the state. Comment.

The brightest young scientific minds at Benjamin Cardozo High School were busy at work last week preparing for the final round of the New York State Science Olympiad after beating out some notable competition a few days earlier. Comment.

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) stood with discouraged parents and community members outside Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village last week, calling on the city Department of Education to remove the school’s principal. Comments (3).

As the city Department of Education’s Feb. 12 deadline draws closer, the state Senate moved swiftly to pass a bill Monday that would allow groups to continue to perform worship services in public schools when they are not in use. Comment.

City Department of Education officials and City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) broke ground last week on a new elementary school in Corona, at Northern Boulevard and 110th Street. Comment.

Students from Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside beat out some stiff competition Saturday to take second place in the regional round of the New York State Science Olympiad competition. Comment.

During the last few weeks, we have heard a lot about instituting a public school teacher evaluation system in New York state and especially in New York City. Comments (1).

Astoria teenager Danielle Goldman said she was feeling great after learning last week she was one of three New York City students and the only one from Queens to advance from Intel Science Talent Search semifinalist to finalist. Comments (1).

Danielle Goldman, an Astoria student who attends Bronx High School of Science, was named a finalist Wednesday in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search contest for her research studying anxiety and depression. Comments (1).

The scientific establishment is paying recognition to Bellerose student Olivia Munk for all the hours she has spent toiling away in her laboratory to better mankind. Comment.

LaGuardia Community College is currently offering testing of English speaking and listening skills through the Versant English Test, a computer-based exam that measures how well individuals use everyday English in a school or work environment. Comment.

Zone 126, an organization created to get children who live in the Astoria Houses better access to education, has received a $500,000 planning grant from President Barack Obama’s administration to to broaden learning opportunities for the public housing complex’s children. Comment.

In his State of the City address, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made education reform the cornerstone of his administration’s final two years. The 12th-richest person in the United States continues to believe the take-no-prisoners approach that made him a success on Wall Street will work well in the public school system. Comment.

A Flushing school cut the ribbon on new equipment last week, allowing the Queens College School of Math, Science and Technology to live up to its name. Comments (1).

In his State of the City address, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made education reform the cornerstone of his administration’s final two years. The 12th-richest person in the United States continues to believe the take-no-prisoners approach that made him a success on Wall Street will work well in the public school system. Comments (1).

Bhargava Chitti is a 17-year-old Flushing student whose cancer research on reducing the sometimes debilitating side effects of radiation therapy has landed him a spot in the semifinals of the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search. Comment.

Queens Library is offering library customers an opportunity to attend the Cisco Academy and become eligible for certification to work as an IT technician, IT administrator or field service technician. The course is free. It consists of 20 three-hour training sessions. The course will be held at Queens Library at Long Island City, at 37-44 21st St. Comment.

You never learned like this by playing Chutes and Ladders. Comment.

The carcass of what once was a proud high school should serve as a monument to the incompetence and arrogance of the city Department of Education. Comment.

New York City is starting a new round of witch trials in our schools, just like the ones conducted last year. The witches are the schools accused of being failures. City education officials just announced that they want to close 19 failing schools while state education officials claim 104 Queens schools were in need of improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Comment.

Community Education Council District 25 voted last week for five school building problems it would most like to see fixed by the city, although that hardly means the projects are a done deal. Comment.

Regarding the Dec. 1-7 TimesLedger Newspaper article “Students protest as CUNY hikes tuition,” I am pleased to share several unreported data points on the value and affordability of a City University of New York education and its benefits for our students. Comment.

Stalled negotiations between the city Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers over a teacher-evaluation system could contribute to Queens schools losing their share of hundreds of millions of federal education dollars. Comment.

A handful of Queensborough Community College students gathered with Holocaust survivors Tuesday to look back on the experiences they shared while interviewing and preserving the survivors’ stories for generations to come. Comment.

Flushing resident JuKay Hsu advocated throughout 2011 for Willets Point to become the site of an applied sciences school, but said Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s school to be built on Roosevelt Island presents a lot of great opportunities for Queens. Comment.

Much remains a mystery about the Forest Hills woman who left $1.6 million to the Queens College music department in her will, but interviews with those who had cursory encounters with Beatrice Schacher-Myers have provided a peek into the life she led. Comments (1).