The two most visible figures in the war over bike lanes, NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (pro) and her predecessor, Iris Weinshall (con) ran into each other. Weinshall embraced the commissioner by the elbows and both smiled and nodded at one another.  (I didn't get my camera out in time to capture the moment.) What did she say to the commissioner? Weinshall told me, "That's between me and Janette Sadik-Khan, don't you think Azi?"

During former School Chancellor Joel Klein's remarks, ABNY's president, Bill Rudin tried hushing the crowd. After he did, Klein joked, "This was like every education meeting I've ever been to. Nobody ever listens."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, in presenting an award to the Council's Education Chairman Robert Jackson, joked he had so much spirt and energy, she feared he might combust.

Former comptroller, and current mayoral candidate Bill Thompson greeted his one-time fund-raiser, Suri Kasirer (who again is the top lobbyist in NYC). "I cam here looking for you," he said.

State Republican Chairman Ed Cox chatted with former Democratic City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz; Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. chatted with former Congressman Mike McMahon. And former State Senator Craig Johnson and consultant George Fontas worked the room.

Two tables down, Anthony Weiner had a very long lunch with another gentleman. The possible mayoral candidate drank iced tea and wore a pale gray suit with a blue shirt and no tie. Mr. Weiner greeted people as they filtered out, including Bill Rudin, who stopped for a few minutes at the politician's table.

We also had a senator from Washington State here on Monday. Her name is Maria Cantwell, and she must be a Democrat because she was here with Leo Hindery and he doesn't give money to Republicans.

Bethenny Frankel was supposed to come on Monday morning to celebrate her one-year anniversary on camera for her show Bethenny Ever After. (Remember when she got married here and peed in my wine bucket? I do.) But at the last minute, they had to fly to the West Coast. Maybe they are making a Bethenny movie!

Last week Ralph Lauren came in. He likes meat, so he usually orders a hamburger. While he was waiting for Barry Diller to arrive last Wednesday, Joel Klein said hello to fellow diners including Donald Marron and Pete Peterson, who was eating with Phoenix House founder Mitch Rosenthal. It was quite the literary week, with Simon and Schuster magnate Michael Korda lunching with Mary Higgins Clark, and Tuesday, Lynn Nesbit brought Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist!

The prince has been coming every day. On Monday, he arrived in a brown coat with mink trim and was so unhappy sitting alone that he left in the middle of his meal. On Tuesday, he had learned his lesson, so he brought a friend, a Lebanese gentleman.

I'm very happy that finally everyone is back from spring break, and it's getting to be the time of year that people start going out again. Even though it's freezing outside, we have our cherry blossoms up and our spring menu is in full swing. Last week a group of six young women came in for lunch and squeezed in at one table. They were celebrating a birthday and drank Dom Pérignon Rosé Champagne. I served them an enormous cotton candy, and they took it to go in a giant white plastic bag. Can you imagine!? Then they invited me to join them to drink Cristal in their white limousine outside.

Keith Kelly reports in the New York Post that sales of Black's book have jumped 400 percent since the announcement. "There's no question her appointment has had an impact at retail," Stuart Appelbaum, the Random House spokesman who confirmed the spike, told Kelly. He said in total, the book has sold 130,000 copies.

Poor Joel Klein - he doesn't have a nice little book of his own! Better get writing, bud!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

"I don't know Cathie Black, but Mike Bloomberg has made pretty good personnel decisions," Levy said. "I think if you have mayoral control the mayor should be entitled to appoint who he wants."

Levy was appointed school chancellor in 2000 by the independent Board of Education, as then-mayor Rudy Giuliani did not have mayoral control at the time.

The announcement that Black will replace Levy's successor, Joel Klein, has been met by tremendous outcry from teachers and public school advocates who see Black's lack of education credentials as a deal breaker.

Levy sees that these criticisms may present a problem for Bloomberg and Black, as she still needs to be granted a waiver from state education commissioner David Steiner.

"The statute seems to require somebody with some education credentials. It was written before the contemporary wisdom that a good manager can overcome a lot of domain knowledge," Levy said. "It's not obvious to me how the commission of education gets around those conditions."

While Klein and Bloomberg have endorsed Black, as well as education reformer and former D.C. public schools commissioner Michelle Rhee, the list continues to grow of city officials contesting her appointment. Councilman Robert Jackson, who chairs the city council's education committee, wrote a letter against Black this weekend, city councilman Charles Barron and his wife Assemblywoman Inez Barron held a press conference last Thursday denouncing Black, and councilman Jumaane Williams and State senator-elect Tony Avella have also spoken out against her selection.

Bloomberg touted Black's experience in the corporate world, where she was the head of Hearst Magazines and the proclaimed "first lady of American magazines," as indicative of her managerial skills. Levy thinks that Black's executive leadership will follow in the example lead by Klein.

"I think his legacy will be that he brought strong managerial disciplines to the school system," Levy said. "People talk about metrics and outcomes in a way, that, I started down the path of getting the school system to talk about metrics and outcomes and being data oriented and he has taken it a huge long distance from where I took it, and that is to his great credit."

SLIDESHOW: 7 Other Media Heads Who Could Run the Department of Education

Click here for the highlights and lowlights of the Klein Era of NY City schools

Bloomberg called Black "someone who has a proven track record of taking big organizations to the next level," emphasizing the managerial demands of the Chancellor's job.

"Joel [Klein] has built on the past, he has made an enormous difference, and Kathy is going to pick up the ball and carry it on down the field," Bloomberg said.

In response to questions about why he did not choose someone from the education field, Bloomberg said that it was not necessary for the position.

"Joel has built an amazing staff of pedagogical experts, that's not our problem."

Pointing out the bureaucratic nature of the position "that has to deal with all levels of government," Bloomberg said that Black has the organizational strength to effectively run the public schools.

"She has more experience doing these things than Joel or I ever had" he said. "She is a world class manager."

For her part, Black said she was eager for new challenges.

"I have no illusion of this being an easy next three years," Black said. "I'm deeply respectful of what has done before me and very excited about what is in front of me."

Klein famously tangled with the powerful teacher's union. Even yesterday, he told the editorial board of the Staten Island Advance that members of the United Federation of Teachers were on an "anti-accountability kick."

Black confessed that she had little experience negotiating with labor in her previous capacities as a publishing executive.

"I've had limited exposure to unions though I spent almost 8 years at USA Today which was a part of Knight-Ridder," she said.

Klein announced that he accepted a position to work as an executive vice president of NewsCorp. and serve on their board of directors, helping to "develop a strategy to put them in the burgeoning education work place."

Parents of the autistic children are understandably concerned about the coming academic year. Their children will be sent to programs in other schools, but nobody seems to know precisely where. That's unfortunate-parents of children with special needs deserve all the support they can get, and that includes timely information about their children's education.

But the good news is that students in the Girls Preparatory Charter School will be able to continue in the program through middle school, using space previously used by the autistic students. In a perfect world, the city would have the resources and ability to house everybody in the same location. But in the real world of difficult decisions, Chancellor Klein had to decide which was the greater good: Expanding opportunities for girls on the Lower East Side, or preserving the status quo at P.S. 188.

Albany, after months of delay, ruled that Chancellor Klein was barred from moving the autistic program without public hearings. But the State Education Department also noted that Mr. Klein had emergency powers that allow him to change the usage of a public-school building without consulting the public. Mr. Klein chose to invoke those powers to allow the charter school expansion.

The autistic children and their parents should have been treated with greater sympathy, but it should also be noted that the biggest critics of Mr. Klein's actions in this case also happen to be among the biggest critics of the charter school revolution. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, for example, said the chancellor displayed "arrogance that too many parents have come to expect" from Mr. Klein. Actually, parents have come to expect accountability from Mr. Klein-accountability that was sorely lacking back in the days of the late, unlamented Board of Education.

Mr. Klein had a tough call to make in this unfortunate dispute over limited resources. We think he made the right one.

Accountability, though, is hardly a New York phenomenon. Urban school districts and administrators are getting the message-test scores matter, and teacher competence matters. Last week, the schools chancellor of Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee, fired 241 teachers-out of 4,300 in the system-either because their students performed poorly on standardized test scores or because they lacked proper credentials. It's hard to know which is more disturbing.

The teachers' union, predictably, vowed to fight the firings, arguing that the performance-review system was flawed. If this sounds familiar, it should: Teachers' unions nearly everywhere, especially in New York, have resisted the notion that classroom performance matters. They have fought against merit pay for outstanding teachers, and they generally stand by teachers whose performance borders on the criminal.

Ms. Rhee is a controversial figure in D.C. because she has promised to shake up a very troubled system. She noted that when she became chancellor in 2007, some 95 percent of the district's teachers were rated "excellent." Talk about grade inflation. Ms. Rhee has put standards in place and insists on holding teachers accountable for their students' performance.

New York, under Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, has taken important steps toward greater accountability. The mayor has closed poor-performing schools (when the courts have allowed him), and Chancellor Klein has been in the forefront of tracking teacher performance.

New York has not had to engage in mass firings of incompetent teachers, at least not yet. But the revolution that Ms. Rhee has touched off in Washington surely will have implications for bad teachers everywhere, including New York City.

We simply can't afford to have well-meaning but incompetent people in our classrooms. City Hall understands that. And clearly so does Michelle Rhee.