More than 5,000 people have applied to become paid parent coordinators in the city's 1,200 public schools, education officials reported yesterday.

The job of addressing parental concerns pays up to $39,000 a year. And Big Apple residents are jumping at the offer....

Public-school parents, and those who used to be, are preferred candidates.

All that is required is a high-school diploma and six years of work experience.

They're closing firehouses, laying off teacher aides, and cutting down on beat cops in New York City. And now they are going to spend 40 million dollars on parent coordinators.

Perhaps if they put some money into revamping the education system in the city, they wouldn't have all these pissed off parents who need a liason to get the administrators to hear them. The public school system is in shambles. What, pray tell, is having a parent liason going to accomplish?

Wait, I know the answer to that. What it will accomplish is that administrators will no longer have to listen to irate parents.

So basically, the city is spending 40 million dollars to turn a deaf ear to the needs of parents. Next they will hire coordinator coordinators, to relay the information the parent coordinators get from the parents to the administrators, who will most likely ignore all of that, too.

Granted, not all the problems lie within the administration. Sometimes the problem is the parent.