The Bronx Breakdown is back with a special President’s Day edition, where we wrestle with our favorite three subjects — the separation of church and state, city subsidies for development projects, ridiculously sad crime stories — and have some fun with SNL. Let’s break it on down. (FYI, above is our temporary new Bronx Breakdown logo. It’s taken from a photo my mother took of Mercedes Benz parked on Seattle street. The Bronx is everywhere!)

One Bronx Church Gets Reprieve
Turns out only one church, University Heights-based Bronx Household of Faith, was able to worship in a New York City public school this weekend.

On Thursday, it appeared dozens of congregations throughout the five boroughs would be allowed to worship inside schools during their off hours after Judge Loretta Preska issued a temporary restraining order on a city policy that bans religious groups from worshiping inside city school buildings.

But on Friday evening, the judge clarified the restraining order, saying, in so many words: actually, um, the only church/religious group this applies to is Bronx Household of Faith, which filed the original lawsuit against the Department of Education and its policy 17 years ago.

The result was mass confusion. Some churches who had applied and were approved for permits received cancellation notices and spent the weekend scrambling to find space to hold services on Sunday. Others did not receive cancellation notices and went ahead with services in the schools they’ve been using.

Pastor Mark Gregori of the Cross Way Church in the Bronx told the AP that if they couldn’t meet at Middle School 101, as per usual, then the congregations would have to trek to a Catholic girls’ high school several miles away.

“That would be a little difficult for the people from our community,” he told the AP. “We’d much rather stay close to where they are.”

Judge Preska is expected to rule on whether to issue a formal injunction on the city’s school worship ban on Feb. 27.

Many Bronx elected officials, including Councilman/Pastor Fernando Cabrera, who has made keeping churches in school buildings his own personal political crusade, are hoping they can overturn the DOE’s policy legislatively.

The State Senate passed a resolution that would do just that, but the assembly has yet to bring its own bill, sponsored by the Bronx’s Nelson Castro, to a vote and is on hiatus until Feb. 28. (Because, you know, unlike our students, our legislators need half of February to relax and unwind after spending an entire six weeks trying to figure out how to improve our state government.)

The bottom line is: whether an injunction is issued or not, this problem is not going away unless the rules are changed legislatively.

Say, for example, the judge decides not to issue an injunction, which would uphold the city’s ban. Who’s going to stop churches from circumventing the rules by changing the way they word their application? What if they just said they were going to sing hymns and read the Bible — two actions not outlawed by the DOE’s policy, but part of all Christian worship services? How would the DOE decide what to reject and what not to reject? Would they hire a theologian to attend these gatherings and deem them “worship services” or not? Will they simply start rejecting any religious group from using school buildings? These are all legitimate questions that will arise.

My problem with the DOE’s policy is a practical one. Practically, it has been, and will be, difficult (and probably expensive based on the extensive time city lawyers have spent on this) to enforce this ban. Practically, who’s really being affected by letting churches worship in schools. The New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union appears to be the only outside group vocally supporting this policy. On the other hand, as I’ve mentioned here before, local parents could care less about it.

If city lawyers had not continued vigorously pursuing appeals of Bronx Household of Faith’s original lawsuit, which resulted in a decade-long injunction on the city’s policy (and only ended this past summer), you would not have heard a peep about this issue. Parents, it turns out, have a lot more to worry about than what goes on at their child’s school on Sunday mornings.

Plus, these churches pay rent! Hundreds of dollars every week. It’s not millions of dollars a year. But it adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. You can’t tell me our schools couldn’t use an extra few hundred thousand dollars.

Debating the FreshDirect Deal
Speaking of a few extra hundred thousand dollars, here’s what Comptroller John Liu estimates the city could pay for with the nearly $100 million in subsidies the city is granting FRESH Direct to move to a prime Bronx location on the Harlem River:

• 4,385 students full, four-year scholarships to CUNY

• hire 1,458 new teachers

• pay for 350,000 GED test-prep programs

• launch a micro-lending program for minority and women entrepreneurs

The subsidies will reportedly protect 600 Bronxites from having to commute to New Jersey and produce another 964 jobs by 2020 that Bronxites can compete for (with a stated goal of hiring 30% Boogie Downers). In addition, FRESH Direct intends to buy 10 fuel-efficient trucks from the newly-transplanted-to-the-Bronx, Smith Electric, and will think about expanding to actually service the borough in which it will reside. Currently, FRESH Direct serves Riverdale, which really prefers not to be called part of the Bronx whenever possible.

So, without even getting into how it will impact plans to make the Harlem River accessible and usable for Bronxites (which we will tackle another time) or how the Council’s living wage deal will not apply to this, was it worth it?

Ridiculously Sad Crime Story of the Week
Two weeks ago, we ran an entire Bronx Breakdown dedicated to negative news, most of it about crime. We strive to be informative and provocative, but we would hate to be known as a dumping depot for Bronx crime stories (you can get that in any city tabloid). So, from now on, the Breakdown will only pick out one ridiculously sad crime story each week.

This week’s winner: On Friday afternoon in Morrisania, a 4-month old baby girl was stabbed in the head with a pen during an altercation between the baby’s mom and a woman. The baby is expected to be fine after being treated for her injuries at Lincoln Hospital. But the bigger question remains: Who stabs a baby with a pen or any other object for that matter?

And finally, we will leave you with this “Bronx Beat” clip from Saturday Night Live. My wife almost cracked a rib watching this the other night.