All in good fun and for a good cause... If you didn't see the comment on my post yesterday, the male teachers at Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle are making a push to beat Dr. Alonso in the final week of the Mustaches for Kids fundraiser. "We have called in all of the big guns i.e. family members and wealthy friends to push us ahead of him," one of the teachers, Jace Goodier, wrote in an e-mail to me.

They're going to have to push hard: The latest figures on the DonorsChoose.org Web site show the CEO has widened his first-place lead, with $3,238 raised for city classroom projects. The Cherry Hill teachers -- a young group that includes participants in Teach for America and Baltimore City Teaching Residency -- are in second with $1,788.

I'm not sure if Alonso's total includes money collected on his behalf last night when he spoke at Bolton Street Synagogue. The congregation donated $250 to the class projects he picked out to thank him for being a part of its speakers series, and someone made a makeshift collection box to take individual contributions (not that temples have real collection boxes).

Alonso said he'd be happy for the Cherry Hill teachers to win. During his talk at Bolton Street last night, he mentioned another competition where he's going to fight much harder: He joked that he'd like to put all the private schools in the city out of business. If the news in Liz's story today about the enrollment decline and economic plight of the area's Catholic schools is any indication, he might be starting to get an edge there, too.