Councilman Oliver Koppell was fired up during last week’s Bronx Community Board 7 meeting, aiming his ire at the Department of Education for its handling of the capping issue at PS 340 (see story here).

The restrained Riverdale lawyer has been a fixture in northwest Bronx politics for decades, having first been elected to office, in the assembly, when Nixon was president. Now finishing his penultimate year in the council (and perhaps politics altogether), Koppell is more apt to nod off than go off.

But there he was, in the common room at Scott Tower, rabble-rousing about the incompetence of the DOE, which, of course, he has intimate knowledge of, having served for a time on the now-defunct School Board. (Name a political office, Koppell’s probably served there.)

Koppell couldn’t believe the DOE would ship 20 kindergarten students all the way to PS 310 more than half a mile away when the solution was 100 feet away at PS 86.

Koppell says he spoke with Fiona Tyson, the principal at PS 86, which is literally a large stone’s throw from PS 340, and she assured him that the school could accommodate the PS 340 castoffs. However, when he brought it up to the DOE, it said exactly what it told this newspaper: PS 86 is already crowded, they can’t handle it.

But the DOE, especially its latest incarnation under mayoral rule, is not known for its on-the-ground intelligence. It’s a data-driven agency. It sees numbers, not kids who will miss their brothers and sisters. It sees math problems, not commuting problems for strained, busy parents.

Maybe Koppell was just excited for his pending trip to Arizona to see his son for Thanksgiving. Or maybe Koppell was on to something and knew the DOE hadn’t done the legwork before making the call. He sure sounded like a man who knew there was a reasonable solution being ignored by a giant bureaucracy. He was fed up and ready to fight.

After saying he had a call with a DOE deputy commissioner scheduled for just before his plane took off for Arizona the next day, Koppell sat down near a PS 340 parent and commiserated.

“It’s ridiculous,” he hissed.

We agree.