As the stock market dips and swings, families at city private schools are considering switching to public schools, threatening to flood already-overcrowded schools. Officials in Riverdale, coping with an unexpected influx, have switched students out of their bursting-at-the-seams zoned schools a month into the semester. In Greenwich Village, another prime neighborhood with overcrowded schools, parents are pushing the city to buy a building from the state to accommodate more students.

The economic downturn has trickled into the budget for the Community Education Councils, and Brooklyn parents worry what else budget cuts will affect in the schools. But it seems that the DOE’s central offices just keep growing; despite a hiring freeze, job openings are posted for numerous positions, including Knowledge Management Domain Leader for Leadership & Organizational Management, which comes with a generous $170,000 salary.

Now that the Mayor is pushing for a third term, the debate over mayoral control has become more about Bloomberg and Klein. And at a rally in Queens, one group of parents said no to mayoral control and no to Mayor Bloomberg. At the national level, advocates fret that other issues may have officially relegated education to the back burner in this November’s election.

Bad news for girls in the papers this week: girls in cities play sports less and later than boys, and their math talent is less likely to be identified and encouraged than American boys’ or foreign girls’. And New York girls trying to buck the trend by attending the all-female Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science have obstacles outside the gender battle: a brand new school building in Brooklyn (shared with three other schools) where construction is dangerously incomplete.

Games are more than child’s play, or so it seems from a swath of stories. A computer game that requires solving algebraic equations is in play in 100 city middle schools and a newly-formed institute will study the impact of educational computer games (and develop new ones). A brand- new training center opened in Co-Op city to serve the 3,500 students in the Beat the Streets wrestling program, special needs students in Staten Island practice yoga with their principal, and a petite high school girl in Queens is suiting-up to play in a football game this weekend. Game on.

Talk of testing dominated the news this week. Whether it was the mayor’s new plan to test kindergarten, first, and second grade students or the results of the SAT exam, the testing debates continued to take up ink. New York students’ comparatively poor performance on the SAT prompted both the Post and the Sun to question the validity of rising state test results. NPR had a different angle on the story - they featured a public school that churned out students with perfect SAT scores. Some New York teachers, meanwhile, are about to benefit from the higher state test scores when they receive their first bonuses, and certain teachers are going to be paid more than others.

While many kindergarteners in New York will start taking tests, the Times reports that the decade-old promise of universal pre-k is far from being realized. Education may be falling off the docket in general, warns the head of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Our chancellor, however, is keeping education in the local news, and this week, he talked to some budding young reporters.

Once-anonymous education blogger Eduwonkette unveiled herself dramatically, via a profile in New York Magazine. But a whole different kind of concealment is happening in a small Texas town, where teachers came to school this year with concealed guns. And the whistle-blowing Post exposed illegal activity and ethics violations all over the school system .

Low performing middle schools will get another burst of attention and funds after last year’s influx of cash seemed to boost test scores in the most of the targeted schools. Cash has also been spent on 18 new school buildings opening next week, although the Mayor says he’s lowered construction costs. And 10 city elementary schools are going to try out the Core Knowledge literacy curriculum - a content-based program that represents a departure from Bloomberg’s Balanced Literacy program.

It’s Friday, which, according to way too many city students, is apparently the day of the week to play hooky! Most of the little truants probably don’t have parents who are as on-top of their education as these parents claim to be. Involved parents or not, every student could benefit from a better physical education program, read more the Riverdale Press.

Enjoy the long weekend and don’t forget to pack backpacks and sharpen pencils, it’s almost school time.

During the long wait to hear about middle school acceptance, I’ve had the chance to think about about what really matters during the often awkward and uncomfortable years.

By now, many parents have already analyzed academic programs, test scores, class size, location and any specialties they feel will be the right fit. That makes the wait a bit harder, because all those questions may have been discussed and circulated in your household or with your child’s classroom teacher for more than year. Tell us already, please!

In the meantime, I’m equally concerned with keeping my middle school kids participating in as many sports and activities as possible, some of which may be in jeopardy next year due to budget cuts.

City dwellers who’ve opted to raise kids in apartment buildings have learned early on the need for finding playgrounds, sports and outside activities. Unless you are comfortable putting your child in front of a television sets and video games for entertainment, your children may have already alienated your neighbors, with say, too many games of indoor soccer or football or furniture doubling as trampolines.

Once kids get to middle school, where everything said, done and worn is potentially embarrassing, their need to keep moving is even more essential. But few middle schools have full sports programs, a big topic of conversation this week at tryouts for the travel teams at Downtown United Soccer League, where my two boys have played on travel teams on and off for the last three years.

Many of the parents there wished their children’s middle schools had the capacity to train and sponsor competitive sports teams after school.

We know that middle school educators absolutely understand the need to keep kids moving. This spring, their efforts let to something extraordinary: A series of track and field events that allowed kids to compete in events like the long jump, shot put, and 75-yard-dash. Over 120 city schools and 30,000 children will now have a chance to compete at Icahn Stadium on June 21st.

The series started five years ago when three District Two teachers decided to hold a small meet in Chinatown. The movement has grown, fueled by coaches and teachers who are not getting paid for the extra time and effort it takes to train and build teams, not to mention the time it takes to transport them to meets and events. Many coaches are working without gyms, fields or equipment.

Manhattan Academy of Technology in Chinatown has had tremendous success in creating and sustaining a sports program, and is now pushing hard to get programs off the ground for other schools as well. This week, they are holding a meeting to discuss creation of a soccer league.

All these efforts must be applauded and supported, and parents should fight hard for sports and extra programs that may be threatened. Keeping our children in top shape and engaged in fun and healthy after school activities gives them confidence and a sense of well-being — and it saves a lot of furniture, too.

It’s not the lack of gym classes in schools — that was earlier this week (and last month). Perhaps it’s the changes to school lunches being made because of rising food prices?

“From such healthy staples as fresh spinach to more haute cuisine like cornmeal-encrusted fish and Cuban roast pork, dishes are getting 86′d from school menus as officials scramble to maintain the same quality with cheaper options,” the Post reported recently about food in the city’s schools.

As we know, of course, canned fruits and vegetables and “imitation” foods like fish sticks and chicken nuggets aren’t at all in the same league as fresh spinach and fish in terms of quality. But they do give kids all the calories they would need if ever they were given the opportunity to use them in a game of kickball or tag. (Or if they were allowed to bike to school; parents in England are stopping their kids from riding to school because of safety concerns. Are parents here, with their fear of “free-range kids,” making similar rules?)

Yesterday, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s office released a report on the state of physical education in the city’s schools, concluding what we already know: schools stink at making sure kids get physical activity. But the facts, at least according to the Public Advocate’s office, are worse than I imagined. Only 4 percent of 3rd graders get gym daily as required by the state; just 31 percent of middle schools give kids enough P.E. time; and more than half of all middle schools have no sports teams at all. Given the scope of its own failure, it’s no wonder the DOE wants to hand off responsibility for fitness to families!

In the last few years, the city’s schools have gotten better about identifying overweight students and suggesting more activity for them, but physical education still gets short shrift at most schools, according to the Gotham Gazette. The DOE’s Office of Fitness and Physical Education implemented a fitness test, called the FitnessGRAM, to give students and their parents more information about their fitness level. But because of the pressure to focus on tested subjects and space and staffing constraints, most elementary schools continue to offer far less than the state-mandated 120 minutes per week of physical activity, instead suggesting to parents ways to help their kids be active and eat healthfully at home. I wonder how many families are able to respond to the FitnessGRAM results the way the DOE expects them to. And even if every parent of an overweight child changes his or her habits because of the test results, should we let schools pass off state-required health and fitness instruction to students’ homes?

When choosing a middle school, what happens after hours is critical in a city where space is scarce and fields are threatened.

Parents mulling middle school options spend a great deal of time comparing math and science programs, class size and school philosophies. They also can’t help noticing the wide disparity of sports and after-school programs and activities

Extras like robotics and rock bands can be big factors for working parents. Who wouldn’t prefer having their kids in fun, structured activities in school instead of hanging out in city parks, unsupervised?

Kids care a lot about these offerings as well. My 5th-grade son is absolutely swayed by the promise of track, soccer and swim teams.

After school sports are even more critical at a time when the few athletic fields available to New York City kids are threatened by politics - as at Randall’s Island - or by development, as at Pier 40, where a huge rally is planned this Sunday at noon to save the fields from development.

So far, no middle school we’ve toured can compete with the offerings at M.A.T. in Chinatown, detailed in a great piece last week in the Downtown Express. The promise of the long-awaited community center that will be available free for all students at IS 289 will also be welcome.

But only M.A.T. offers a climbing wall (a great metaphor for middle schoolers, who literally climb them anyway) along with a surfing club and a tremendous track and field program. John De Matteo, the school’s ambitious athletic director, is building a really impressive program where 65 percent of all students participate in a sport.

To his credit, De Matteo has already met with the principal of Tompkins Square Middle School to explain how M.A.T. can support 16 sports and 38 teams. He plans to meet with other middle school principals to talk about how they can model their programs after M.A.T. as well.

De Matteo is happy to share his insights because he is so convinced that it makes a huge difference in the lives of middle schoolers.

“I believe that being on a structured sports team which teaches children how to work with their teammates, build sportsmanship, build community and character and motivate to improve grades will be one of the most important opportunities for our children to have,” he says.

Any advice M.A.T. can offer middle school principals will be a positive step for all New York City public schools. Space, money and scheduling issues all interfere with the creation of after school programs. Just last week, hundreds of kids and parents crowded into PS 3 in the West Village, pointing out the critical need for more schools in Chelsea and the Village. Kids wondered why luxury condos are cropping up everywhere when schools are not.

There are not enough good public schools in the city. We also need fields, after school programs and sports. Parents are going to have to make a lot of noise to make sure we get them.

In the meantime, let’s offer support and encouragement to the educators and visionaries who are creating, pushing and sharing programs that mean so much to our kids.

Next year, kids at 10-15 schools will have more time in school if all goes according to plan for The After School Corporation, which at the chancellor’s urging has bought into a national push to give up on traditional school hours.

According to the Daily News, TASC is planning a pilot in which kids might go to school through the summer or until 6 p.m. daily in an effort to extend the amount of time they’re learning. In addition to having more time for academics (and, presumably, testing), TASC President Lucy Friedman told the Daily News the new schedule will allow schools to preserve art, music, and sports programs that have been pushed out during the regular school day. TASC says the pilot will honor the teachers’ contract, although it’s difficult to imagine how it could, and it can’t be a good sign that UFT President Randi Weingarten has already called the pilot “another one of these secretive plots.”

The Daily News notes that the idea for the pilot germinated in conversations with Chancellor Klein. Nationally, there is a growing movement to extend school time; the National Center on Time and Learning was launched in October (with some funding from Klein favorite the Broad Foundation), and the issue even got discussed during a Democratic presidential debate this fall. Many charter schools already have longer school schedules.

Six months after filing suit over the city’s deal to lease most of the Randall’s Island playing fields to private schools, Harlem residents are enjoying their first day in court today. Norm Siegel, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, is trying to expand the lawsuit to make it a broader attack on the city’s proclivity to issue no-bid contracts. But the Sun reports that “in the end, the case will turn on a narrow issue: whether the city circumvented the community board and City Council in approving the lease agreement.” It’s probably best for the plaintiffs that the key legal issue is technical and not moral: contradicting their claims, the head of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation says the deal will create even more access for public school families than they had in the past. Construction on the fields began this summer.