Last month, the city Department of Education faced a barrage of anger and frustration from parents, teachers and union officials over the closing or co-locating of more than 100 schools citywide.

Now, as the changes agreed to by the Panel for Education Policy in last month’s two vociferous meetings begin implementation, the DOE is promoting its plans, including the opening of dozens of schools across the city.

Both in the court of public opinion and in an actual court of law, the ruling this week was that Mayor Bloomberg has overreached again.

It’s hardly surprising for someone who’s at the top of both the financial and political worlds, serving his third term as New York’s mayor and having about $27,000,000,000 in personal wealth. But that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with it.

The police officers and bodies in suits standing guard at the end of the auditorium aisles have become a familiar staple of late winter and early spring meetings of the Panel for Educational Policy in recent years.

The policy-making arm of the city Department of Education decided the fates of dozens of city schools, including two high schools in Queens — Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship; and Law, Government and Community Service — and voted on a slew of other new collocated schools, including new ones that will be placed in Flushing and Newtown high schools at a meeting Monday night at Brooklyn Technical High School.

Newtown High School doesn’t need a separate school that focuses on teaching English as a second language, because the facility already offers such classes, according to parents, teachers and East Elmhurst residents at a meeting on Feb. 27.

Department of Education representatives presented a proposal to add an international school to Newtown, which serves a diverse population of students. Sixty percent of the 2,251 students are Hispanic and 25 percent are Asian.

To members of the Flushing High School community, the Department of Education’s plan to open two new schools in its building and decrease enrollment in the school is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to do what they failed to do last year:

Get rid of it. The two schools the DOE is planning to add to Flushing High School would open in September.

It’s been nearly three months since a gunman massacred 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn.

But while the issues of gun control and mental illness have topped the agenda in the tragedy’s wake, for many parents, administrators and officials, security at schools is a hot topic.

The city Department of Education has scheduled public hearings this week for the three Queens high schools proposed for "phase-out" — meaning eventual closure, , or as sites for new colocated schools. 

Dear Editor:

We have repeated mass murders even where there are guns available and people trained to use them, some examples are:

• The President Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, where three others were shot and wounded and where Reagan’s press secretary, Jim Brady, was shot in the head;

• At the Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 (15 people killed, 23 wounded), where armed guards were present;

• At Virginia Tech in 2007 (32 people killed, 17 wounded), where an armed police force was on duty;

• The Fort Hood shooting on November 5, 2009, where in the course of the shooting, a single gunman killed 13 people and wounded 29 others.

What could have prevented the 2011 Tucson, Ariz. shooting where U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot and six people died?

What could have prevented the mass shooting that occurred on July 20, 2012 at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were killed and 58 others injured ?

We should not ignore that the key to gun safety is regulating the guns.

The Second Amendment is not under attack, it has never been under attack.

We do not ignore car safety, saying cars do not kill people, drivers do.

The solution is better gun control.

First, Congress should pass the Fix Gun Checks Act, which would close the “private sale loophole.” It would require every gun buyer to pass a background check.

Second, it is time to pass an enforceable and effective assault weapons ban. A previous ban expired in 2004, and even though President Bush supported reinstating it, Congress never acted. Congress should also ban the high-capacity magazines that have been used again and again in many mass shootings.

Third, the president and Congress should work together to make gun trafficking a felony — as Sen. Gillibrand, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and others have proposed.

Let’s stand together for the kids and teachers of Newtown and the Americans who die from senseless gun violence on a daily basis in our country perpetrated by people with unregulated access to guns, tools designed to kill.

The Department of Education last week announced plans to colocate three new schools on the campuses of Newtown and Flushing high schools next year. One school will be placed at Newtown while the other two will share space at Flushing High School.

The move has raised eyebrows with many who say both schools — especially Flushing — are already operating at or over capacity and cannot fit anymore students.

New York lawmakers this week overwhelmingly passed the NY SAFE Act, a set of bills that ban certain assault weapons, require stricter licensing and background checks, limit bullet purchases and restrict the mentally ill from obtaining guns.

The stringent laws are the nation’s first set of gun control bills approved since the Newtown, Conn., shooting, where 20 children and seven adults were murdered in the nation’s second largest school shooting.

A downed fence that used to block Long Island Rail Road tracks from a dead end street in East Elmhurst poses a danger to children on the block, civic leaders say.

The fence is made of flimsy wire that buckles for a few hundred feet and is held up by a medley of metal and wooden poles of varying thickness and height.

John Marus, who was a member of Community Board 10 since John Lindsay was mayor, passed away in Pennsylvania on Dec. 6 at the age of 81.

A native of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Marus lived in Staten Island for a time before relocating to Howard Beach, where he lived from 1958 until 2011 when he relocated to Newtown, Penn.

Failing schools, immigration, bizarre crimes and art filled the pages of the Western Queens edition of the Queens Chronicle this year.

Residents fought against developments they thought would be detrimental to the community, from a strip club in Long Island City to a proposed soccer stadium in Flushing Meadows Park, from the addition of affordable housing in Hunters Point to the lack of affordable housing in Willets Point, which will largely affect Jackson Heights and Corona.

Mets shortstop Jose Reyes was the National League batting champion in 2011. The pending free agent did not receive a contract offer from the Mets and signed a six-year, $106 million deal with the Miami Marlins, who would go on to trade him to the Toronto Blue Jays a year later.

In 2012, Mets knuckleball pitcher RA Dickey won the Cy Young Award for being the best pitcher in the National League. Since Dickey would be a free agent after the 2013 season, the Mets decided to trade him while they could get something in return, rather than wait a year and get nothing, as with Reyes. The Jays apparently offered the Mets the best package of prospects. One can just imagine the conversation Reyes and Dickey will have in Dunedin, Fla. when the Blue Jays open their spring training camp.

Parents and school staff in Queens Monday morning wanted to talk about anything other than Friday’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school that left more than two dozen people, including 20 children, dead.

60 miles southwest of the site of one of the worst school shootings in American history, moms, dads, teachers and principals are trying to wander through the minefield of what to tell schoolchildren about the tragedy that ended the lives of so many their age.

Socrates Sculpture Park at 32-01 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City, is looking for artists and architects with a deadline of Jan. 7. Visit socratessculpturepark.org, click on the exhibition tab and search for artist opportunities for more information and to print out an application.

Only a few months after a court ruling gave a last-minute reprieve to seven Queens high schools, the city Department of Education is eyeing three schools — including one of those seven — in a new round of academic performance probing that could lead to closure of the schools.

Flushing High School and two schools located at Campus Magnet in Cambria Heights — Law, Government and Community Service High School; Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School — have been targeted by the DOE’s early engagement program. As part of the program, DOE officials have been meeting with parents, staff and students to discuss academic performance after the three schools earned D grades on the DOE’s annual report cards released last month. Department officials get updates from members of the school community and report that information to the superintendent.

Western Queens as a whole weathered Hurricane Sandy without too much damage, residents said.

A few trees and lots of branches came down; Gantry Plaza State Park was flooded, but the water subsided by Tuesday afternoon; LaGuardia Airport also filled to the brim and didn’t open until 7 a.m. on Thursday; but nevertheless most of the lights stayed on and no fatalities were reported in the area.