As of now, the Out of School Time program reaches 154 schools in Brooklyn. According to its website, it offers "a mix of academic, recreational and cultural activities for young people (grades K-12) after school" and is free of charge. It's also a relief to parents who work longer hours and rely on the program to watch over their children into the evening.

But, according to a new report out by The Daily News, it looks like almost 10,000 kids in Brooklyn who participate in the program are out of luck this fall.

The OST program houses 52,567 students every weekday city-wide. This number will be halved once the budget cuts from Bloomberg's administration are installed. Here's the data: this year, the budget was $91.5 million; next time school is in session, the funds will have dropped to $73.3 million. Instead of 154 programs, Brooklyn will be left with 77 overloaded OST's, pushing 10,000 kids out of the program. And none of the parents involved are too happy about it.
More >>

The bicycles are comin'! The bicycles are comin'!More >>

Sam Levin

Paul Robeson student holds a Bill of Student Rights.

Students frustrated with the city's plan to shut down their high school walked out of class today and marched two-and-a-half miles in support of Occupy Wall Street's May Day.

Separate from the chaotic protests in Manhattan -- which, as expected, are getting a lot of attention for their arrests and police-protester confrontations -- the rally in Brooklyn was peaceful and remained focused on a number of key education issues in the city that have gotten support from Occupy Wall Street. The march was organized and led by high school students with some help from a handful of OWS-ers.

The Voice first caught up with students at noon in Crown Heights from Paul Robeson High School -- a struggling school the city is in the process of phasing out. It's the time of the year when education rallies and heated Panel for Educational Policy meetings make headlines as critics target Mayor Bloomberg's controversial practice of shutting down failing schools. It's one of a handful of policies that have fueled criticisms over mayoral control, the governance structure that gives Bloomberg direct authority over the education system.

More >>

Sam Levin

The new "apple green" Boro Taxi, unveiled at City Hall this morning.

It's not lime green, not key lime pie green, not sea-foam green, nor is it chartreuse. Nope. The city's new taxi for upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs, unveiled this morning, is apple green.

The mayor's office emphasized this specific shade of green at a press conference at City Hall this morning by having a basket of green apples on site and one prop apple at the podium that speakers could hold on to and toss in the air if they wanted, to emphasize that this new taxi is in fact "apple" green -- a topic of much debate among reporters in attendance.

In front of the steps of City Hall, the mayor's office took the cover off a model of the new taxi, which looks a lot like the yellow taxis, only it's (apple) green.

More >>

Sam Levin

Mayor Mike Bloomberg at the Barclays Center, future home of the Brooklyn Nets.

This morning, reporters wearing hard hats entered the massive construction site of the future home of the Nets in Brooklyn to hear Mayor Mike Bloomberg brag about the thousands of jobs the project will provide for neighborhood residents.

But there seemed to be a bit of confusion in the question-and-answer session about the exact nature of the jobs and how many will actually be full-time when the large sports and entertainment arena officially opens this coming fall.

The hard-hat-wearing mayor, standing with Bruce Ratner, the developer behind the project and co-owner of the Nets, unveiled a plan today to fill approximately 2,000 jobs at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn with priority given to local residents.

More >>

Empire State Development

In a feat for community groups that have been critical of the controversial Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, a judge has ruled that the project needs further review.

But that's not stopping the developers from pushing forward with a central part of their plan: a new arena for the Nets, which is slated to open in the fall.

Yesterday, an appeals court ruled unanimously that the state's Empire State Development Corp. must go back and review how the decades of projected construction of the massive 22-acre project will impact residents in the surrounding neighborhood. This Supreme Court Appellate Division ruling upholds a lower court's decision last July that said a new environmental review of the second phase of the project was needed. That means that the 11 towers Bruce Ratner plans to build in the next phase of the project must be reviewed, while the first part of the project -- which includes the arena on Flatbush and Atlantic avenues -- is clear to move forward as is.

More >>

Four police officers were injured in Sheepshead Bay early this morning in a shootout with a man who had shut himself after a dispute with moving company employees. The officers -- two of whom were shot in the calf, one who was shot in the thigh and ankle and another whose face was grazed -- were not seriously injured. The man, 33-year-old Nakwon Foxworth, barricaded himself in his sixth-floor apartment along with his pregnant girlfriend and 4-month-old son after threatening the moving company employees, one of whom called the police, with a gun. When Foxworth's wife and son escaped, police entered and the shooting broke out. "We're not certain about what the fight was about," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, according to the New York Daily News. "Obviously (Foxworth) was very hyper to say the least. He had a dispute with his lady friend and told her she couldn't leave. And when she just left and left the door open, he started shooting." [NYDN, CBS New York]

More >>

via Facebook

City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who opposes the development of a new hotel in East Flatbush.

​East Flatbush is a lovely neighborhood in Brooklyn -- but it's just not really a tourist destination. So if a developer is looking to open a hotel in the area, it can only mean one thing: Prostitution, drugs, and other bad, bad activity. Right?  More >>

via City Planning's official challenge

Map shows change in vacancies over the last decade according to the Census

Sorry, Mike! The city is just not as big as you think it is.

That's according to the U.S. Census Bureau, anyway, which, in very unsurprising news, has announced that it is not revising its official population count for 2010, despite the city's official challenge of the final number.

Every ten years, the Census counts populations across the country, coming up with a new number that determines how different regions are funded and how populations are represented through new districts. The typical song and dance is that city government officials dispute the conclusion, arguing that their city is actually much bigger than the Census determined. This time around, the 2010 Census found the city's population to be 8,175,133, but the city's Department of Planning has argued that the population was closer to 8.4 million as of July 2010.

More >>

Faced with the unattractive and expensive prospect of raising money to find traditional spaces in which to perform, a young theater company, Rudy's Meritocracy, has turned to manual labor. The group is advertising their services as a makeshift moving company. If you hire them, they'll help you move your stuff, and after that's done they'll put on a 40 minute show about moving titled THISISMYREALLIFE in your new apartment. The group came upon the idea in part from their experiences of being 20-somethings in the city. "All our friends are moving all the time," Cordelia Istel, one of Rudy's Meritocracy's three members, told Runnin' Scared Friday. "We're two, three years out of school and have just looked at friends constantly moving and realized that provided us with empty space."

More >>