Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was set to lose control of the New York City school system at midnight Tuesday, but despite dire predictions of chaos from the mayor and others, it appeared that the nation’s largest school district would continue to operate largely as usual.

The shift of power, from Mr. Bloomberg’s hands to the clutches of a yet-to-be-appointed Board of Education, came after an impasse between Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate thwarted attempts to renew mayoral control of schools, which the Legislature authorized in 2002. The law set June 30, 2009, as the day the mayor’s control would end if it was not renewed.

Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to lay off up to 7,000 city workers, saying municipal unions and state officials haven’t done enough to help New York balance its budget.

Budget Director Mark Page told agency heads Wednesday to cut $350 million from their budgets, saying previous cuts of $3.1 billion starting July 1 weren’t enough.

“This next step would most likely rely heavily on additional headcount reductions, whether through attrition, or, as is more likely, through layoffs,” Page wrote them in a letter.

“It is expected that these savings could result in a reduction of as many as 7,000 positions citywide.”

. . .

The mayor has asked municipal unions to pay for 10% of their health care costs and find additional health cost reductions to save $557 million, in order to avoid layoffs.

“This is a ploy to get more money from Albany, and he really deserves it,” said Harry Nespoli, head of the Municipal Labor Committee, which negotiates for city unions.

“We’re still at the table. He just made it more difficult to negotiate.”

While Bloomberg’s request for $350 million in savings won’t plug the $1.6 billion gap in next year’s budget, Nespoli said he would tell the city’s 310,000 employees that the threat is real.

“I’m going to tell my workers there’s a possibility of layoffs in the city of New York. I’m not going to lie to them,” said Nespoli, who heads the sanitation workers’ union.

“In this crazy world today, nobody can eliminate layoffs.”

Cops were searching Tuesday night for the archer who shot an arrow that nearly hit a Queens father as he carried out the trash.

Brace yourselves for more fun news: recessions, it turns out, while bad for humans, may be good for cockroaches and mice.

Veterans in the pest control industry said that their customers, both residential and commercial, appear to be sacrificing on regular exterminations as a cost-cutting measure. While restaurants are bound by the threats of steep fines, apartment landlords and office buildings are cutting back services, the exterminators said.

Robert Agatowski, with Control Exterminating Company on East 33rd Street in Manhattan, recalled a recent call from a general manager of a business.

“He said, ‘It’s very simple. I don’t know if we can make the rent or the payroll,’” Mr. Agatowski recalled. “‘So in other words, you’re out. We’ll step on the bugs and kick the mice.’ The exterminating almost becomes like a luxury item.”

He and other exterminators interviewed this week were careful not to name names.

The streets of New York may look more like the canals of Venice in the coming decades as temperatures — and water levels — rise to dangerous new heights, according to a report released today by a panel of scientists assembled by Mayor Bloomberg.

Similar to a scary sci-fi movie, the scientists said water levels around the city could rise by two feet or more in the coming decades and average temperatures likely go up at least 4 degrees, according to a report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

“Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after a catastrophe,” said Bloomberg. “We can’t wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change.”

It looks like a grand patriotic gesture on the part of one of Staten Island’s best-known Realtors: Flying a huge American flag, albeit atop a bulky-looking 90-foot pole, behind the Neuhaus Realty office in Richmond.

But it’s not your typical flagpole: It houses sensitive and essential communications technology recently put in place by the federal government in direct response to 9/11.

The “monopole” was erected under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by private aerospace and defense technology contractor Northrup Grumman with the OK of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT), confirmed the city and Northrup Grumman.

Its underlying purpose: To enhance the city’s wireless communication network and aid first-responders in case of an emergency, as part of a $500 million five-year effort by city government.

What’s more, the fake flagpole in Richmond is one of four monopoles that have been constructed in the borough — with more on the way.

Because of security considerations, the city won’t divulge where the others are.

A similar-looking one, on Capodanno Boulevard in Midland Beach, erected in 2005, “isn’t ours,” a source in city government said. At the time, the Advance reported it was a cell phone tower.

It was those damned geese!

A feather from a bird and “organic material” has been found on the engine, wings and fuselage of the US Airways airliner that crash-landed in the Hudson River, federal authorities said yesterday.

Investigators also have found that fan blades in the Airbus A320’s right engine “revealed evidence of soft-body impact damage.”

. . .

“What appears to be organic material was found in the right engine and on the wings and fuselage,” said the NTSB in a press release. Samples of that material have been sent to the US Agriculture Department for DNA analysis.

“A single feather was found attached to a flap track on the wing,” said the release, adding that the feather “is being sent to bird-identification experts” at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

It was the evidence of the old bird’s feather! It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage!

New Yorkers clamored yesterday for flocks of geese near area airports to be killed to prevent them from taking out another plane like the US Airways carrier forced to crash-land in the Hudson.

“These geese are a blight,” said William Santos, 50, as he walked the World’s Fair Marina near La Guardia Airport, where more than 100 geese gathered. “The city has to get them out of here, just for our own safety, never mind the mess they leave behind.”

Another marina visitor, Jack Riley, 43, was more blunt: “They should have a hunting season here on these geese. Let the criminals shoot the geese instead of people.”

A collision with a flock of geese is being blamed for the engine failure of the US Airways flight.

New York police officials are studying the feasibility of disrupting cellphone communications between terrorists during any attack, after revelations that gunmen in Mumbai received electronic transmissions during their killing spree in November.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly raised the possibility in Washington at a Senate hearing on Thursday, but he noted there were technological hurdles to shutting down cellular service in a narrow location, like a hotel or movie theater.