Local elected officials joined representatives of the borough’s 12 community boards on Monday afternoon to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed cuts that would cut funding to each board from $200,000 to $186,517. That amounts to a nearly 7 percent decrease.

On Monday, April 12, the New York City Charter Revision Commission, set up by Mayor Bloomberg to review the city’s rules and regulation, will take testimony from Bronx residents.

Bronx Congressman Eliot Engel recently announced that Lehman College’s Mathematics Achievement with Teachers of High-need Urban Populations (MATH-UP) program will receive a $7.6 million grant from the Department of Education’s Teacher Quality Grant Program. Engel, a former educator, says the grant will improve education in the Bronx by better preparing teachers for the job.

Bronx Congressman Jose E. Serrano recently praised the student loan reform bill that was included within President Obama’s Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Serrano, who was present at the signing of health care reform, considers the act a significant step toward making higher education a more realistic goal for families and children in the Bronx.

A listing of public and community meetings for all our readers in the northwest Bronx and beyond.

The Bronx is home to about 2,500 Bangladeshis, according to the 2000 census, and the vast majority of those residents live in Norwood.

So it was not surprising that 250 Bangladeshis from across the city gathered at the Church of the Holy Nativity on Bainbridge Avenue in Norwood on Sunday to commemorate the 39th anniversary of their country’s independence

In addition to the 10 Bainbridge Avenue stores that were destroyed in a horrific Oct. 31 blaze, the adjacent Holy Nativity Church was also damaged. But a $100,000 facelift of the church is nearly complete just in time for its 110th anniversary later this year.

We are pleased that Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. has assembled a strong team of well-known professionals and community leaders to serve on a new Kingsbridge Armory Task Force.

We hope they can quickly come up with some creative ideas that break the tiresome mold of cookie-cutter malls that don’t offer the community anything it really needs and do little to lift workers into even the working class.

A tremendous public resource like the Armory should fulfill myriad public needs.

Retail does not have to be excluded entirely, despite the collapse of the Related Companies proposal in the City Council. The beauty of the Armory’s half-a-million square feet is that it can accommodate so many critical community uses like recreation, entertainment, job training, small business incubator and youth development. Stores can be part of the mix, too. Many of these ideas have been on the community’s drawing board for years.

There have been many Kingsbridge Armory task forces throughout the years, and this one has no real authority aside from the bully pulpit. But maybe that’s a good thing.

Millions of Americans have received the 2010 census form in the mail. While we generally dread government forms, we should welcome this one. In a very real way, the census form, which can be completed in five to 10 minutes in most cases, is as powerful a tool as the right to vote or the freedom to assemble, dissent, and express unpopular opinions. Just as those things are part of the U.S. Constitution, so is the mandate for a census to be conducted every 10 years.