So, remember how in December we concluded that there's nothing that a public school can do to successfully fight off co-locations with other schools?

Well, Brownsville Academy High School proved us wrong.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reign, rulings on co-location proposals seem to be guided by an unspoken scientific law which asserts that a co-location in motion shall remain in motion.

But, less than a week after dozens of BAHS students filed a lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education challenging the co-location of a Success Academy charter school, the DOE has notified the lawyer of the students, Arthur Schwartz of Advocates for Justice, that it will scrap its plans to co-locate the building out of which BAHS operates.

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We're damn-near a month into the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181's bus-driver and matron strike, and the city is still pretending like it doesn't have everything to do with why this mess continues to drag-on.

The union, politicians and parents are begging the city to at least come to the table and consider negotiating an agreement with the striking workforce. But, in case they haven't made it clear enough, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott are stubbornly sticking to their argument that the city cannot legally implement a new Employee Protection Provision for drivers and matrons when their contract expires in June.

Two weeks ago the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the city, along with bus companies, are the primary employers of the union. But apparently the city doesn't really care what the NLRB thinks.

"I've said it over and over again. I think it's the role between companies and the union, and I'm not changing that," Walcott testified during a joint-committee city council hearing on Friday. "We have a responsibility based on our legal interpretation and based on what we feel is the right thing -- not to include the EPP."

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As more than 8,000 school bus drivers and matrons formed picket lines around the city this morning, some 152,000 students and their families were forced to find alternative means of transportation in the pouring rain.

Jackie Ceonzo, mother of a 17-year-old autistic son, had to find a way to get her son from their home in the Upper West Side of Manhattan to his school located downtown in Chelsea -- all the while battling the flu and nasty weather.

"You know what the worst part is? It's that my son doesn't understand, and he loves the bus," Ceonzo tells the Voice. "So, the worst part is telling him that there's no bus coming and he's still in school. He's autistic so he's going to be so jammed up... It's not like I can just get on the subway with him."

For Ceonzo, as with the families of the some 54,000 other special-needs students affected by the strike, the journey won't be as simple as hopping on public transportation or jumping in a cab.

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

From the school's rally against co-location in October.

UPDATE: Anyone who fought against the recent round of co-locations can now rest assured that they never had a say in yesterday's Panel on Educational Policy's vote.

The PEP voted late last night to approve every co-location proposal up for consideration. The approvals came after hours of impassioned pleas to the panel from members of the public both against and in favor of the proposed co-locations.

Everyone in attendance should demand that the DOE reimburse them for five hours spent at a meeting that essentially amounted to an open-mic therapy session at best.

Students from transfer high school Brownsville Academy, where the PEP ultimately voted to approve the co-location of a Success Academy Charter School, stayed until 11 p.m. pleading with the panel to reconsider.They were trying to figure out why the panel would potentially disrupt one of the city's rare high-performing transfer high schools to co-locate an elementary school.

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

From the school's rally against co-location in October.

Students, parents and the surrounding community have made it clear that they don't want the New York City Department of Education to co-locate a new school alongside Dr. Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of the Arts in Brooklyn.

But, they're unclear whether they possess the power to stop it from happening.

The City's Panel on Educational Policy is set to rule on proposed co-locations around the city later today. Those looking to prevent co-location at their community school aren't sure whether they've had much say in the matter.

"I honestly I feel like the decision might already be made. I've attended as many meetings as I could," Anthonine Fiote, a parent of two middle school students at Susan McKinney, tells the Voice. "This school is really filled with talented kids who want to take [their craft] to the next level. If you take that away from them, I just feel like that's wrong."

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

Principal Bernard Gassaway urges the community to play their part in ensuring that kids get educated.

Those advocating to preserve the current structure of Boys and Girls High School say the New York City Department of Education has failed to calculate the role it has played in contributing to the school's drop in performance in recent years.

The historic Bedford-Stuyvesant high school is facing the prospect of being phased out, radically redesigned and divided into several different district or charter schools -- after receiving poor performance grades from the DOE for the last three years.

Members of the Boys and Girls family, politicians and members of the surrounding community passionately reminded the DOE -- at a community meeting held at Boys and Girls last night -- that the school has admitted nearly 2000 underachieving students from around the borough in the last three years.

"You cannot ask a school to absorb 1800 students from all over the borough, who themselves have been dislocated, and expect that they will come together under one roof and...really function at optimal capacity," Congressman-elect Hakeem Jeffries told District 16 Superintendent Karen Watts and another DOE representative at last night's forum.

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Jason Lewis/Village Voice

Jackie Ceonzo and other upset parents give testimony at yesterday's hearing.

By the time parents got their turn to testify at yesterday's City Council hearing on the city's problematic school bus service, lead officials from the Department of Education, such as Deputy Chancellor of Operations Kathleen Grimm, were long gone.

"I'm just so disappointed that the [DOE] and the [Office of Pupil Transportation], officials couldn't see fit to stay and listen to the family testimony because I really feel like they need to hear what some of the parents need to say," said one mother of a six-year-old autistic son.

After nearly three hours of listening to officials mull over the issues facing the DOE's school-busing system, the parents, who actually have to deal with the mess on a regular basis, finally got an opportunity to voice the distress that the flawed system has caused them and their special-needs children.

Some of the problems parents have with the city's busing services include chronic lateness, overcrowding, long ride times, frequent route changes and staff transfers, and under-trained bus drivers and bus matrons.

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Two days ago, City Hall released its 'Progress Report' for the country's largest public school system. In it, 217 of New York City's public schools were blacklisted for receiving either an F, D or the third C in a row on the Department of Education's report cards.

It was the highest amount of academic centers for youth so far to be considered 'failing' institutions -- last year, only 116 schools were scrutinized for underwhelming achievement. However, after immediate scrutiny from teachers and parents alike, the DOE has scratched a bunch of schools off of its 'hit list.'More »

Willard "Ross" Lanham, 58, learned yesterday that embezzling millions of dollars in funds meant to bring Internet access to kids is not only a despicable thing to do, but it will also earn you more than three years in prison.

A Manhattan federal court judge sentenced Lanham to 37 months in jail for orchestrating an embezzlement scheme that netted him $1.7 million from the New York City Department of Education.

Lanham served as a consultant for the DOE from 2002 to 2008 on three projects designed to upgrade the technological infrastructure in city public schools. It was through the Power Connect project, which the DOE launched to bring Internet access to city public schools, that Lanham devised a scheme to skim the city out of the large sum of money.

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Just when you thought the New York City school system couldn't get any crazier, a judge has ruled that city taxpayers might be on the hook for one girl's $40,000 private school tuition.

The 12-year-old girl, who attended PS 6 on the Upper East Side (one of the city's higher-rated schools), has a learning disability and, according to her parents, was tormented in class constantly. When the school did nothing about it, her parents pulled her out of the public school and sent her to the Summit School in Queens, a state-approved private school.

Now, they have asked the Department of Education to reimburse them for the $40,000 they spent on Summit, and Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein agreed with them. He ruled that the girl's "educational rights" were violated, and that the city should be on the hook for the girl's private school education.

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