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NEW YORK, NY September 09, 2005 —With education a major theme of his re-election campaign, Mayor Bloomberg visited three schools to mark the first day of city classes.

REPORTER: Bloomberg read to first graders at PS 376 in Bushwick, which now has its first gifted and talented class. But the mayor learned six year olds have other things on their minds when a boy blurted out that he lost a tooth.

MAYOR: Uh oh! Are they going to grow back?

KID: I lost two teeth.

MAYOR: Are they going to grow back... oh, I can see the new ones coming in.

REPORTER: Afterwards, Bloomberg had lunch with older students at Queens Vocational High school to celebrate their new cafeteria. The teenagers asked him about Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq.

MAYOR: I don't think anybody likes the war. I don't know what I would have done, I don't think anybody knows what they would have done if you were president back then looking at the intelligence, I don't know.

REPORTER: Several teachers in the school wore black in a show of protest that they're still without a new contract. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.