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A New York City police officer pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that he participated in a ring that robbed drug dealers, an operation that officials say yielded more than 550 pounds of cocaine and $1 million in drug proceeds. The case against the officer, Emmanuel Tavarez, 31, was scheduled to go to trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn before Judge Sandra L. Townes, with jury selection set for Monday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, there are many things that women can't or just don't do: Be counted as one of the 10 people needed to make up a minyan, or prayer quorum. Walk around in pants. But vote? According to the bylaws of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, a social service agency and community pillar that has received millions of dollars in government grants over the years, only those who meet the following requirements can vote for its leadership: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The founder and chief executive of Teach for America, Wendy Kopp, 43, is also the author, most recently, of ''A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for All,'' written with Steven Farr (PublicAffairs, 2011). She is half of an education ''power couple'': Her husband, Richard Barth, 44, is president and chief executive of the KIPP Foundation. They live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with their four children: Benjamin, 11; Francis, 9; Haddon, 7; and Georgina, 3. How does she do it all? Here's a clue: ''Sleeping in'' means rising at 6. ELISSA GOOTMAN SEVEN HOURS I'll get up at 5 or 6. I try to catch up on sleep on the weekends, so I'll try to get seven hours of sleep. During the week, my ideal is to go to bed at 9 and wake up six hours later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The students shuffled one by one into the sun-dappled Clason's Point branch of the New York Public Library, on Morrison Avenue in the Bronx, taking their seats at round orange tables laden with computers. ''Everybody, try to put your phones away, please,'' their teacher, Anthony Perez, requested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Updated 4:51 p.m. She's been found! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DUANE READE ranks pretty high on the list of character-killing (if useful) additions to a neighborhood. But the Duane Reade that opened this month on Broadway at 72nd Street has an unusual distinction: It is the second in the city with a beer counter, called Brew York City. It's not quite a bar, because the not-quite-a-bartender who stands behind it can't pour glasses of beer for customers to sip while filling prescriptions or perusing the shampoo selection. Instead, he sells growlers, refillable glass bottles, for $3.99. And for $7.99, he fills them with one of nine varieties of beer on tap, like Sixpoint Sweet Action or Ithaca Apricot Wheat. Last year, a Duane Reade in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, became the city's first with a beer counter. It was such a hit, said Richard Ruiz, the Broadway store's manager, that it is being repeated. ''Everyone slows down when they pass this section,'' said Julio Vega, who was manning the counter one recent afternoon. Across the aisle: bags full of potato chips and pretzels. VIDEO FORUM, a video rental store on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, will have its last day on Sunday, and its significance has been parsed in the Park Slope blogosphere. Is it a sign that the northern part of the Brooklyn neighborhood is ''becoming luxurious,'' as the author of a post titled ''Video Store Closure Proves North Park Slope is Awful'' suggested? Another blogger, lamenting the development, asked, ''Would locals be willing to commit to using a brick-and-mortar rental shop rather than Netflix?'' A third blog mocked the notion of video store as community pillar, writing: ''Ever hear of market forces?? Well they are at work, and they are busily ensuring that every video store from here to kingdom come will shortly be closed.'' Sean O'Brien, Video Forum's assistant manager, said the store prided itself on its collection of obscure and foreign films, classics and early copies of new releases. Video Forum, unlike some Seventh Avenue neighbors, was done in not by rising rents but by ''the changing nature of the business,'' he said. ''We could no longer compete with the Internet.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

6:41 p.m. Updated Harrowing details in the beating of an 18-month-old Brooklyn foster child emerged in court on Monday, during the arraignment of the man charged in the case, Kysheen Oliver, 19, the boyfriend of the child's foster mother. In court papers, prosecutors cited a doctor at the hospital where the boy, Kymell Oram, was taken as telling the police that he was ''likely to die.'' But it was not clear when that assessment was made, or whether his condition had since improved. On Monday, a spokeswoman for the hospital, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, said only that Kymell was in critical condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For legions of lactating women in one of Manhattan's most productive precincts, it has become an essential destination: a place to buy breast pumps and BPA-free bottles, and to bond over the myriad challenges of what is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world. The windowless emporium on West 70th Street has not just nursing bras but nursing blouses, nursing tank tops and nursing dresses, with a name, though high in snicker potential, that perfectly captures the neighborhood zeitgeist: the Upper Breast Side. But now, the boutique is colliding with another symbol of Manhattan life: the powerful board and picayune rules of a fancy apartment building, in this case the Pythian, a landmark originally built as an exclusive -- and, yes, all-male -- lodge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brendan Fay, the co-chairman of the St. Pat's for Allparade in Queens, was making his final preparations on Saturday evening (Banners? Check. Irish flags? Check. Umbrellas? Check.) when the calls started pouring in. ''I got e-mails, telephone calls and some texts,'' he recalled. '' 'Brendan, did you see what happened in the Rockaways? Did you hear the reaction the mayor got? The mayor was booed! It's all over the news!' '' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kathryn S. Wylde, 64, president of the Partnership for New York City, the city's premier business association, works days that start early and often stretch into the night. Once a month she takes a break and flies to Puerto Rico, where she spends five or six days -- including one Sunday -- with her husband, Wilfredo Lugo, 65, who lives full time at the couple's home in Quebradillas, on the northwest coast. On most Sundays, she catches up on e-mail and makes plans for the week ahead from her co-op in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which she shares with her cats -- officially two, the limit her co-op allows. WHEN IN NEW YORK I get up about 7, which is sleeping late. I make a pot of tea and check my BlackBerry. I got rosacea about 15 years ago, and they said don't eat spicy food, don't drink liquor and don't drink caffeine. So I went from coffee to tea and kept the rest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Three Kenyan police officers were suspended and placed under investigation on Thursday after a newspaper published photographs that it said showed undercover officers murdering three men who had surrendered in the middle of a busy Nairobi highway. Kenya's leading newspaper, The Daily Nation, published photographs on Thursday that it said were taken by a driver at the scene on Nairobi's Lang'ata Road where the episode unfolded about 9 a.m. Wednesday. In one photograph, a man described by the newspaper as an undercover officer points a gun at two men lying on the ground in the middle of the road. Another photograph shows the bodies of two men after they were shot dead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Before Barbara Reich, The Organizer, arrived, I had devoted several frantic hours to pre-organizing. After all, I had spent weeks absorbing her secrets to a clutter-free existence, so I knew something about how to Barbarafy. I also feared that if she saw my children's playroom in its natural state, she might have deemed the whole place unsalvageable. ''If you're nostalgic in any way, you're probably in trouble with Barbara,'' Ken Yaffe, a client, told me. I happen to be nostalgic in every way. I cannot, for example, part with matchless baby socks. Or certain stacks of old newspapers. But it would be nice to be able to find working batteries and misplaced Batmobiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GLIDING into Susan Hitzig and Ken Yaffe's apartment, in a doorman building off Central Park West, Barbara Reich did not waste time ogling the obvious: the sleek kitchen, the view of the American Museum of Natural History, the sophisticated living room bearing no trace of the couple's three children. Instead, Ms. Reich peered into a closet, where she found mismatched hangers and decreed, ''This is wrong.'' Ms. Reich zoned in on a pile of books and games on the floor: ''There's no reason we should have a stack of stuff like this.'' Then she got to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LONDON -- The British police promised an investigation into the attack on a limousine carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, while security experts and the news media raised questions Friday about how the royal couple were placed into the potentially dangerous situation. Dozens of protesters broke through a cordon of police motorcycles on Thursday to smash and deface the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI that was carrying the prince and his wife. The demonstrators dented a rear panel, splattered the glossy dark brown exterior with white paint, pelted the car with sticks and bottles, and smashed a side window. Some yelled, ''Off with their heads!'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SANTIAGO, Chile -- At least 81 inmates were killed after a fire broke out during a fight in an overcrowded prison here in the Chilean capital, in what officials described as the worst disaster in the history of the country's troubled prison system. Many of the prisoners in the stricken wing were first-time offenders. The cause was still being investigated, but an inmate who called national television from a cellphone said that it began when a stove burner fell during a fight between inmates, and that prison authorities had waited an hour before contacting firefighters. ''The riot police came in first and began to beat us,'' he said, ''and later the firefighters came in.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Their world had been rocked, and the questions came fast and furious: A 31-year-old teacher from Midtown Manhattan who had barely touched a banana in six years wanted to know if she could really consume them with impunity. A small-business owner from TriBeCa wondered whether she was being nudged to part with that second (or third) glass of wine. And a woman with silky brown hair, on her way out the door after a Weight Watchers meeting in the basement of a Park Avenue South office building, had a particularly urgent need. ''I just have one question,'' the woman said. ''How much is a potato latke? I need to know for tonight.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many other parents, Lisa B. Donlan was cautiously optimistic back in 2002 when Joel I. Klein, a former federal prosecutor and Bertelsmann executive, was appointed chancellor of New York City's public schools. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had just won control of the schools from Albany, and while Ms. Donlan was happy with her own children's school, she knew that parts of the system were badly broken. ''Back then, people were hopeful, people were open-minded,'' Ms. Donlan recalled this week. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three years after a landmark agreement to cut class sizes in New York City's public schools, classrooms are swelling across the city, a result of budget cuts and spending decisions that have reduced the teaching force. According to the city's Department of Education, elementary schools this year had the largest increases, with average class sizes growing to 23.7 students per class from 22.9 last year. In middle schools, class sizes climbed to 27 from 26.1; high school class sizes held at about 27. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of who can run a large public school system has shifted radically in the past decade, as lawyers, bankers and budget experts with little classroom experience -- beyond sitting in one -- have been tapped as superintendents and chancellors throughout the country. The departing New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, of course, is a prime example. But in the eight years since he was appointed, the education world has changed, and become fertile ground for a crop of would-be school executives with one foot in the world of business management and one foot in the world of school reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For three decades, Gene Russianoff, the staff lawyer for the New York Public Interest Research Group's Straphangers Campaign, has championed the rights of subway riders. Most days, he is one: He and his wife, Pauline Toole, the program director of the We Are New York Community Leadership Project, do not own a car. But on Sundays, Mr. Russianoff, 57, Ms. Toole, 54, and their daughters, Jennie, 14, and Natalie, 11, who all live in Park Slope, dash around Brooklyn on foot, by bus and, if they are late to a soccer game, by car service. ''Taking the train on the weekend,'' Mr. Russianoff said, ''is like Russian roulette.'' SLEEPING IN Normally, I get up at 6, 6:15, but I'll get up at 8, 8:15 on a Sunday. I'll stay up late on a Saturday night to read. I've been in the same book group for about 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NO, Catherine Hooper did not live through Hurricane Katrina, and while she did see the second plane hit the World Trade Center, she viewed it from the treadmill at her gym, where she was watching television. But Ms. Hooper, a 5-foot-1, 99.6-pound disaster-preparedness entrepreneur in a Christian Dior dress, has had some riveting firsthand experience. She had just moved in with her fiance when word broke of Bernard L. Madoff's sweeping Ponzi scheme. Her fiance was Mr. Madoff's younger son, Andrew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tim and Nina Zagat, co-founders and co-chairmen of the Zagat Survey, don't cook much during the week. When you spend your days expanding and perfecting your empire of restaurant and leisure guides -- like the 2011 Zagat Survey, released on Wednesday -- it would be wrong to whip up some pasta at home instead of heading out to, say, the Mark Restaurant by Jean Georges. That changes on weekends, which Mr. and Mrs. Zagat (pronounced zuh-GAHT) spend at their country home in Millerton, N.Y. On Sundays, Mrs. Zagat, 68, makes soups and jams, and when there are guests -- often their two grown sons and daughter-in-law -- she prepares lavish breakfasts. Mr. Zagat, 70, enjoys them. ELISSA GOOTMAN WHO'S UP FIRST (Her) I usually get up about 7 and check my e-mails, check what the weather is and what's exciting online. Then I get ready and go out and buy the newspapers and go to the local farm stands. (Him) I've always wondered what Nina did between 7 and 9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kristin Chenoweth, a Tony- and Emmy-winning actress (and ''Glee'' guest star), recently extended her run starring with Sean Hayes in ''Promises, Promises,'' the musical revival playing at the Broadway Theater, through Jan. 2. For Ms. Chenoweth, 42, this means more time in New York, where she lives on the Upper West Side with her Maltese, Madeline. Despite a 3 o'clock Sunday matinee, she makes time for God and Starbucks. --ELISSA GOOTMAN SLEEPING IN If there was something I could change about myself, it would be to be a morning person. But I am not. I usually get up at 11 or 11:30 because I've had two shows the day before. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is an enduring image from last Thursday's storm: the car, innocently parked along a sidewalk or resting in a driveway, suddenly crushed into near-oblivion by a tree. True, cars are a luxury in many city neighborhoods - even, some would argue, an unnecessary assault on the environment. Still, city car owners have their reasons, and they suffer enough already: The jolting realization that it's 11 p.m., you're already in your pajamas, and you need to move the car to comply with alternate-side parking regulations. The tickets that come when that realization comes just a minute too late. Those shaming window stickers. The road-hogging garbage trucks. No right turn on red. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As National Weather Service officials declared Friday that two tornadoes had indeed swept into New York City on Thursday, some tree-lined streets in Brooklyn and Queens looked - at least from the air - like Lego masterpieces that angry children had done their best to sweep aside. Some were more than a century old but still sturdy and doing their jobs. Many others were young and willowy, just getting going. Some of them were inscrutable; no one truly knew them or how they got there. But others felt like old friends. They were wonderful for their blissful shade, to climb, to simply stare at and admire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As City Room live-blogged the 9/11 ceremony held near ground zero for victims' relatives, the reader comments that poured in were, for the most part, moving and mournful, and tinged with hope. They were long on memories and condolences, and short on politics. Many were shiver-inducing in their poetry and gentle empathy. That was Sept. 11 of last year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new voting system unveiled in New York City for the primary election on Tuesday was plagued by problems, with some polling places opening hours late and others verging on chaos as workers coped with malfunctioning machines. Some polling sites did not receive the optical scanners needed to read paper ballots by 6 a.m., when voting was supposed to begin. At other polling places, the scanners failed to operate properly when they were switched on, forcing voters to wait while election workers struggled to get the devices going. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In my neighborhood it is known simply as ''the muffin shop,'' and it is the muffin shop, though that is kind of a shame because the real name, Blue Sky Bakery, is just so right. You wake up, you walk down Fifth Avenue past the toy boutiques and restaurants that have popped up since Blue Sky opened and the unsung bodegas and hardware stores that were there before and seem to be sticking it out. Then you walk into the nine-foot-wide ray of sunshine that is Blue Sky, with its lemon-yellow chairs, large mirrors and decorative striped awnings, and you're already happy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reading about it online, you would think that the controversy over this year's assigned reading for students new to Brooklyn College would have led to fevered student and faculty protests by now, making the campus the latest to be roiled by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But so far at least, the furor over the book -- ''How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America,'' by Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate English professor at Brooklyn College - is unfolding a bit like the debate over the planned Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan: much of the intensity seems far afield, while the response in the neighborhood itself is more muted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Torrington, Conn. IT was the top of the fourth inning here at Camp Wah-Nee and the Red Team freshmen were down 15-4. At the plate was Joe Miller, a sweet-faced 8-year-old from New Jersey whose love of baseball is so great that he listens to Red Sox games on headphones while trying to fall asleep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WHEN Pedro Santana arrived as principal of Middle School 391 in the South Bronx four years ago, it was, as he likes to put it, ''a hot mess.'' Fights were frequent, windows were slathered over with paint. Only 11 percent of seventh graders had passed their most recent state math tests. Had Mr. Santana fled, teachers and parents would not have been surprised. Instead, he went shopping. He returned with delicate curtains, a white couch, silver lamps and a slate water fountain, transforming his office into something that looks like a hotel lobby in Miami Beach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Around the time the ninth New York City public-school teacher was being booed offstage Wednesday night at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater, City Room started wondering who at the Education Department could have possibly endorsed the notion of an Apollo Amateur Night devoted exclusively to city teachers. Or whether the event, billed as a way to spotlight teachers' hidden talents (see video), was really some sort of crafty bargaining tool intended to show them that raises or no raises, they should consider themselves lucky to have their classroom jobs. After all, the Amateur Night audience is notoriously merciless. With dozens of students in the audience of 1,500, the booing came particularly fast and furious. And don't teachers endure enough already? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

JOHN MORO, a walkie-talkie-wielding dean, was patrolling the halls of the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music one recent afternoon, droning, ''Let's go! Ladies, walk and talk please.'' Lisa Gwasda was leading her choir class in lilting 16th-century madrigals, Paula Kadanoff was teaching a health class on safe sex, and Matthew Daley was coaxing ideas from his senior English class about the use of hubris in ''Beowulf,'' ''Macbeth,'' ''Oedipus Rex'' and Percy Bysshe Shelley's ''Ozymandias.'' Then the bell rang, and the four descended into the school's basement. They plugged in amplifiers, broke out microphones, unpacked instruments and turned into the Suspensions, a soul-infused rock band composed of eight teachers plus a college counselor and a school aide singing backup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE lovely sounding gentleman on the other end of the line was simply trying to improve his corner of the world. Instead, he was rapidly losing faith in city government. As I placed him on hold for the third time, I heard him mutter: ''She's having a hard time finding it! It was on 1010 WINS this morning!'' Indeed, how could an operator at New York City's vaunted 311 help line be utterly clueless about a tree giveaway program that was just talked up on the radio? (Then again, why didn't the lovely gentleman just call the radio station?) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

David Levin, 40, co-founder of the celebrated KIPPcharter school network and superintendent of KIPP's New York City schools, works 75 to 90 hours a week training teachers, raising money and shuttling among six schools. Even Mr. Levin's Saturdays tend to be consumed by KIPP, which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program. Sundays, though, are reserved for his wife, Nikki Chase-Levin, 38, a marketing consultant (they met speed-dating) and their 15-month-old son, Max. The family lives on the Upper West Side. ELISSA GOOTMAN [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WHEN Costco opened its first Manhattan outpost last November, in a soaring East 116th Street shopping complex with river views, management did not know precisely who or what to expect: Would customers stream in from East Harlem and Washington Heights? Or would the aisles be flooded with Upper West Siders stocking up on San Pellegrino? How much demand would there be for kosher meat? Costcos nationwide sell some 57 million rolls of Charmin per month: would people living in cramped apartments go for those 30-roll packages? Turns out there are even more Upper East Siders shopping at the Manhattan Costco than had been expected (and a lot were expected), but there are also plenty of people from Harlem, Morningside Heights, the Bronx and beyond. Kosher food is in high demand, though not as high as in Costco's kosher capital, Lawrence, N.Y. And as for the question of where shoppers keep it all, Iliana Dimitrova, 36, an accountant, offered this clue: ''If you open my kitchen cabinets, it's all toilet paper and Bounty from Costco.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building a playground is not as simple as installing a set of vertigo-inspiring monkey bars: These days, the world of playground design is rife with debate over how high the slides should be, whether the equipment should be brightly colored (kids say yes) or blend in with the environment, and whether themes like castles and rocket ships stimulate or stifle the imagination. But those who think about playgrounds for a living, as scholars, manufacturers and children's advocates, were united in their bafflement on Thursday over a playground at a Brooklyn housing project featuring a pretend jail with bars and a cell door. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AFTER Tina Chang puts her 7-month-old son, Roman, to bed, she pads, barefoot, about three feet over to her office, where a desk cohabits with the changing table. She opens the window to take in the sights and sounds of her neighborhood, Park Slope -- men arguing on the street, neighbors sipping wine on fire escapes, apartment lights twinkling. She opens a spiral notebook from the 99-cent store and begins scribbling. One night she started with a recipe for black bean sauce, another with the first line of a rejection letter from a literary journal, another with a to-do list. ''Then something takes over,'' said Ms. Chang, 40. Over days, weeks, months, her stream-of-consciousness musings grow into poems like ''Birthing a Boy'': [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Christos Tsiamis, 59, grew up in the Greek port city of Patras and spent his summers swimming in the Ionian Sea. These days, Mr. Tsiamis's attention is consumed by a less alluring body of water: the Gowanus Canal, which this month was designated a Superfund site. Mr. Tsiamis, a 22-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the project manager charged with determining just how contaminated the Gowanus is, and how best to clean it up. A chemical engineer with a master's degree from Columbia University, Mr. Tsiamis, who splits his time between Manhattan and Eastchester, N.Y., is also a poet who has published four books of poetry in his native tongue. Becoming an engineer: As a teen I used to vacation with an uncle of mine. He owned a dye production factory. In the mornings, I would go down to the factory and look at how they produced the dyes. I was greatly intrigued. It was the transformation of materials: You see materials that look one way, and then they are transformed. It is a miracle. By the time I was a senior in high school, I knew I wanted to do chemical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

CITY ISLAND, a tiny and curious enclave in the Bronx, has a cinematic history that is long, if not quite storied: Parts of a 1912 rendition of Shakespeare's ''Richard III,''believed to be the oldest surviving complete American feature film, were shot there. But the island is often playing some quaint small town or fishing village far from New York. Now City Island is starring as itself, in ''City Island,'' which won the Audience Award at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center in Greenwich Village. The movie features Andy Garcia, who is also a producer, as Vince Rizzo, a prison guard with secret acting aspirations -- and a bigger secret. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AMY BRILL, a writer who lives in Windsor Terrace, survived nine months and six days of pregnancy, then 40 hours of labor. But after a few days of nursing, she was in excruciating pain, crying every time her baby latched on. Ms. Brill's pediatrician wrote out a phone number as if it were a prescription. ''Call this woman,'' he said. ''She's seen every new mom in Brooklyn.'' Not quite, but over the last five years this woman, Freda Rosenfeld, has seen some 2,000 new moms, some of them multiple times, and many with multiple babies at once. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

They determine the A through F grades that can make or break a school's reputation, as well as which schools go out of business. They dictate which principals receive five-figure bonuses and which stand to lose their jobs. Mastering them has meant cash rewards for thousands of students, and their teachers. One of the hallmarks of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's seven-year stewardship of New York's public schools has been an intense focus on standardized tests. The change has also aroused opposition, as critics question whether an overemphasis on developing test-taking skills is overtaking more valuable lessons in critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The New York State Assembly is expected to approve a bill extending mayoral control of the New York City public school system as soon as Wednesday, lawmakers said Sunday night. The bill, which the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, introduced late Sunday, would add some checks on the mayor's power, by increasing oversight of certain contracts and requiring hearings before individual schools are closed. But it is widely seen as a victory for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had vigorously fought other curbs on the powers he enjoys under the current mayoral control law, which was passed in 2002 and expires June 30. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year? An accomplished violist who infuses her music lessons with the neuroscience of why one needs to practice, and creatively worded instructions like, ''Pass the melody gently, as if it were a bowl of Jell-O!'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

They are younger than their predecessors, have less experience in the classroom and are, most often, responsible for far fewer students. But their salaries are higher and they have greater freedom over hiring and budgets, handling a host of responsibilities formerly shouldered by their supervisors. Among the most striking transformations of New York's public school system since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took charge in 2002 is that of the role of principal, once the province of middle-aged teachers promoted through the ranks, now often filled by young graduates of top colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New York University, whose expansion efforts have put it at odds with some Greenwich Village residents over recent years, is extending an olive branch -- in the form of classroom space for students who are not exactly its demographic. In a letter to local politicians, John Sexton, the university president of the university, offered to lease the city 5,500 square feet for four pre-kindergarten classes and two offices. The classrooms are needed because of a space crunch that has left 90 neighborhood children on a waiting list to attend kindergarten at Public Schools 41 and 3 in the Village. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With outraged parents planning to take to the steps of City Hall on Wednesday to protest the placement of hundreds of children on waiting lists for their neighborhood kindergartens, New York City Education Department officials scrambled on Tuesday for a solution. But as word spread of the leading plan -- moving prekindergarten classes out of Public Schools 41 and 3 in Greenwich Village, and replacing them with extra kindergartens -- the effort seemed to backfire, inflaming parents rather than placating them. Andrew Jacob, an Education Department spokesman, acknowledged that officials were considering relocating the prekindergartens scheduled to open at the two schools but said ''there hasn't been any decision.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a growing collection of Manhattan's most celebrated public elementary schools notify neighborhood parents that their children have been placed on waiting lists for kindergarten slots, middle-class vitriol against the school system -- and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg -- is mounting. Parents are venting their frustrations in e-mail messages and phone calls to the mayor, local politicians and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein (''You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness,'' read one father's recent missive, which he shared with The New York Times). Some plan a rally on the steps of City Hall for next Wednesday afternoon (''Kindergartners Are Not Refugees!'' proclaims a flier), and some are taking it upon themselves to scour the city for potential classroom space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ben Sherman, principal of the new East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens, was mortified one morning when a fire drill unexpectedly interrupted a cultural program, sending students and visitors from Korea scurrying outside. The drill had been planned by the principal of Intermediate School 237, whose building Mr. Sherman's school shares and who was unaware of the performance because of what both now say was poor communication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New York City investigators have found that a deputy schools chancellor solicited charitable contributions from executives of Edison Schools, an Education Department vendor for whom he once worked. The city's Conflicts of Interest Board closed the matter without taking action against the deputy chancellor, Christopher Cerf. But in a letter to Mr. Cerf, the board's chairman, Steven B. Rosenfeld, said that Mr. Cerf had used his city position to benefit the Darrow Foundation, a nonprofit group on whose board he sits. The letter also provided a ''formal reminder of the importance of strict compliance with the city's conflicts of interest law.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]