Parents do not need a role in deci- sions like new school sites or school zoning, Mayor Mike Bloomberg told The Villager last Friday.

Bloomberg said parents need only be involved in the micro issues of their child’s education, like the student’s attendance, behavior and grades. It does not make sense for parents to be involved in larger issues like over- crowding, because those issues take years to resolve, Bloomberg said.

“When you’re talking about siting schools, you’re not talking about paren- tal involvement,” he said, “because the process from deciding you want to build a school, siting it and building it and moving your kid in — your kid’s going to be through graduate school by that time. These things don’t hap- pen overnight. You’re talking about a different group of people who want to have some input: community activists. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not parents.”

Bloomberg drew the distinction between parents and activists dur- ing an hour-long interview Friday with reporters and editors from The Villager, Downtown Express, Gay City News and Chelsea Now, the group of four newspapers owned by Community Media.

Earlier this year, the state renewed mayoral control of the city’s schools, keeping Bloomberg in his position of oversight and responsibility. Some par- ents opposed the renewal because they wanted a greater voice in the city’s education policies.

In Lower Manhattan, parents point- ed to the persistent elementary school overcrowding and the Department of Education’s incorrect population pro- jections. Those parents, who raised the problems months before the city acknowledged or addressed them, and who have sometimes suggested the solutions the city ultimately imple- mented, said the city could benefit from being required to listen and respond to parents.

For example, it was a local parent who fi rst identifi ed the site for P.S./I.S. 276, the soon-to-open “green school”

in southern Battery Park City. And it was parents, together with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who success- fully advocated for the city to open kindergarten classes this fall in Tweed Courthouse, on Chambers St., when it became clear that nearby P.S. 89 and P.S. 234 would not be able to handle the influx. In many cases, the parents fought for the new school seats even though their children did not directly

The new version of mayoral control does include provisions for parents to have more input in Department of Education decisions through the Community Education Councils, but many parents still want a larger say. Asked if the new version of mayoral control gives parents enough input,

As mayoral endorse- ments continue to stack up a little more than three weeks before the election, the silence of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been deafening.

On one hand, she has been viewed as a close ally of Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his biggest enabler in the push to overturn term limits last year. On the other, Quinn

Quinn’s no ‘lap dog,’
should be speaker,
Mike tells Villager

Mayor Bloomberg on Tuesday at a ceremony at the memorial for slain
police offi cers in Battery Park City. Added to the memorial were the names
of 10 offi cers who worked on the pile at the World Trade Center after
9/11 and have died in the years since.

fire- brand Democrat who rep- resented the East Village and Lower East Side in the City Council during some of the area’s most turbulent years, from 1974 to 1991, died at New York University Medical Center on Sun., Oct. 4. She was 95.

A political figure who evoked passionate reac- tions from her admirers and detractors alike, Friedlander is best remembered for advocating on behalf of gay and lesbian issues, women, tenants and the homeless.

Frieda Bradlow, Fried- lander’s longtime campaign manager and close friend, said the former coun- cilmember had been living

on her own independently in her second-fl oor, rent-con- trolled, walk-up apartment at 314 E. Sixth St. until six months ago, when a home healthcare attendant start- ed visiting her. Friedlander had declined opportunities to move to assisted-living facilities in the past.

On Oct. 4, Friedlander’s breathing became labored, and she was taken by ambu- lance to the hospital, where she died that afternoon, Bradlow said.

to Friedlander daily, visited her at least once a week and also helped take care of her.

“She insisted on staying in her apartment — which was up a flight of very steep

Ann Landers
types again,
p. 16

that has been saturating the media lately was done for free or if Koch got cash. Hizzoner told us that — as opposed to his being a pitchman for the Dot NYC LLC group — it was completely gratis. “They saved my life,” he told us. “Gave me a new life, so to speak. I went in for a quadruple bypass and the replacement of an aortic heart valve — and I was in the I.C.U. for fi ve weeks — which is extraordinary. And there were times I didn’t think I would make it — when I didn’t think I would come home.”

been an unsavory combination in recent years, but here’s one good story. George Manos of Village Apothecary, 346 Bleecker St., proudly informed us that his daughter

Illustrated for Kids as one of the magazine’s Sports Kids of the Month. She now has a chance to go on to win the Sports Kid of the Year and get her photo on the mag’s cover. The nominations are to honor outstanding young athletes who “do it all” on and off the filed. Alexandra, 16, studies music at LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts where she also is captain of the varsity softball team. Alexandra led LaGuardia to its first-ever undefeated regu- lar season and was named team M.V.P. While doing so, she led the league in E.R.A. (0.00) and struck out 130 batters in 51 innings — or 2.5 strikeouts per inning. Phenomenal! We hear George is a pretty mean softballer himself — he plays in a league in Central Park — so the talent obviously runs in the family.

ting extra protection last week, thanks to a police sky tower that was posted on the street’s south side across from Mercer St. Two officers in a radio car parked at the tower’s base last Friday night said the tower, with its blinking blue light on top, acts as “a deterrent” to crime. Crime has been up slightly in the area lately, they said, which is why the tower was there. The tower shifts around, sometimes from week to week, and they never know where it will be stationed next, they said.

community garden on E. 13th St. Saturday afternoon to enjoy the brisk autumn weather in the soothing setting of its foliage and some conversation with three of its intrepid gardeners,

Hill gave us the report on an offensive mural that recently popped up on a building wall across the street, depicting three men in hoods, an upside-down cross and a swastika, which the landlord quickly painted over. They also talked about how photographer Shell Sheddy owes some hours in the garden, and that she’s on the edge of having to pay up a fee unless she reports for duty. Molloy noted he recently heard N.P.R. give The Villager a nice on-air plug.

set up to honor the work of the late Lower East Side art- ist Boris Lurie, who founded the NO! Art movement. The Villager profiled the iconoclastic Lurie in March 2005, three years before his death at age 83 in January 2008. The foundation is offering grants of $25,000 to “unrec- ognized, innovative artists in all media, including visual artists, sculptors, poets, musicians and others whose work broadly embraces the spirit of the NO! Art move- ment represented by the life and the work of the Founder Boris Lurie.” Applications should be submitted directly to Ms. Gertrude Stein, Artistic Director of the Boris Lurie Foundation, 50 Central Park West, NY, NY 10023, with a copy to Dr. W.F. Pepper, 575 Madison Ave., Suite 1006, NY, NY 10022. For more information, call 212-595-0161 or e-mail info@borislurieartfoundation.org .

Weberman charges that Amazon “bowed to pressure by Giuliani” and pulled the book off its site. But he assures, “I have books left in case he decides to make a run. I’m going to send it out to the whole Republican National Committee, so they know who they’re dealing with.”

“Old-fashioned in every way”,
this Chelsea “trip back in time”
purveys “hearty” Americana
in a “Waterford-and-wood-
buring-fireplace” setting; add in
“accommodating” staffers who
“pour a great Guinness” and the
“whole is definitely equal to
more than the sum of its parts.”

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Register now for art and craft
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A robber entered a second-floor apart- ment at 50 W. Ninth St. at 4:10 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 8, after the housekeeper went to put out garbage and came back inside without locking the door behind her, police said. The robber, described as a Hispanic man with a light complexion, 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 175 pounds, with black-and-gray hair and wearing a gray, hooded, zippered sweatshirt, blue jeans and tan work boots, grabbed the woman from behind as she was vacuum- ing, police at the Sixth Precinct said. The robber tied the housekeeper with the vac- uum cleaner cord, then stuffed an iPod, two laptop computers, an iPod speaker and $200 in cash into a red backpack that he stole from the premises. The suspect, between 50 and 55 years old, ordered the housekeeper, 53, to wait 10 minutes before calling for help, and fled. The apartment’s owner was out at the time. Police are asking anyone with informa- tion to phone the Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-577-8477 (TIPS), or go online to www.crimestoppers.com or by texting 274637 then entering TIP577.

The body of an unidentified man was discovered on the uptown D train tracks at the Broadway-Lafayette St. station at 10:12 p.m. Sun., Oct. 11, police said. Someone pulled the emergency brake of a train in the station at the time, but the body was not discovered until the train pulled out of the station, according to reports.

station at 14th St. and First Ave. around 11:30 a.m. Wed., Oct. 7, police said. The victim was pronounced dead by an Emergency Medical Service team that arrived at the station.

A boy, 15, arrested for burglary in Richmond Hill, Queens, on Friday night Oct. 9, is also a suspect in up to 25 burglaries in the Village, police at the Sixth Precinct said. The suspect, Juan Gonzalez, was apprehended along with his 13-year-old brother and was charged with 12 robberies in the Richmond Hill precinct. Police sources said the sus- pect was first arrested in 2005 for bur- glary when he was 11 and was arrested again last year. Gonzalez began taking his younger brother with him recently, according to a Daily News article. The Village burglaries, which occurred over a period of several weeks, are under inves- tigation, police said.

A man and a woman from Massachusetts were charged with grand larceny and pos- session of stolen property on Wed., Sept. 30, when they tried to pay for drinks at Off the Wagon, 109 MacDougal St., with a stolen credit card, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Offi ce. Danielle Hill, 22, and Anthony Brazza, 26, were charged with stealing the card from a woman who had left her bag at a table while she went to the bathroom at a nearby bar on Sixth Ave. and Bleecker St. The couple were being held in lieu of bail pending a Jan. 10 court appear- ance.

Police responded to a call to a seventh- floor apartment at 420 W. 19th St. in the Robert Fulton Houses at 11:40 p.m., Sat., Oct. 3, and found a victim on the floor bleeding profusely from the chest. Luis Natal, 41, who answered the officers’ knock on his door, was charged with stab- bing the victim, whom he has known for 20 years, according to the D.A.’s office. The victim, whose name was not disclosed, was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was reported in critical but stable condi- tion. The defendant told police that some of the victim’s friends had jumped him the previous week, according to court papers. On Saturday, the victim came to Natal’s

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