The familiar honk of a fabled New York City mayor coursed across tens of thousands of telephone lines yesterday, as robocalls voiced by former Mayor Ed Koch reached out to parents to encourage them to vote in the straw-poll Ccommunity Education Council elections. Whether Hizzoner was pressed into service before or after the deadline was extended, from April 22 to April 29, isn't clear. We've asked the group that organized the get-out-the-vote campaign, powertotheparents, about the telephone campaign and will report back with details on how much was spent -- and how they got the telephone information for New York City public school parents.

But even with phone calls and extended deadlines, turnout at meetings has been painfully slim, as we reported two weeks ago and Beth Fertig reports on WNYC today, and actual votes to date, which the News' Merideth Kolodner cites as just under  12,000, represent a tiny sliver of the 750,000 households considered eligible to vote.

Update:  Grassroots Intiativeorganized the phone campaign for a total cost of $15,000, according to Power to the Parents, which added "DOE provided the call lists directly to the call vendor. The lists included all households with kids in NYC public schools. Grassroots Initiative was not given access to any parent information."  (Except for the telephone numbers, that is.)  Over 700,000 calls were placed.