NORTHFIELD, Ill. -- More than 1,000 Chicago public school students skipped the first day of classes yesterday to protest unequal education funding, a boycott organizers said would continue through the week with help from retired teachers who will turn office lobbies into impromptu classrooms.

The students took church buses 30 miles north to the wealthy suburb of Northfield, where they filled out applications to enroll in the better-funded New Trier district. The move was largely symbolic because students must pay tuition to attend a school outside their home district.

The turnout fell short of the thousands organizers expected, and was a tiny fraction of the more than 400,000 students who attend Chicago public schools, but protesters and their parents said they're willing to keep the boycott going as long as it takes to persuade state officials to give their district more money.

Chicago Public Schools spokesman Mike Vaughn said he did not know how many students boycotted the country's third-largest district yesterday; attendance figures would not be available for a couple of days. Although district officials agree the system is underfunded, he said, they consider it a mistake for the children to miss any school.

Today, boycott organizers will attempt to set up impromptu classrooms at Chicago City Hall and the state's James R. Thompson Center, as well as in the lobbies of more than a dozen Chicago corporations, including Boeing Co. and Aon Corp., that support Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

MIAMI -- The Pentagon sent three more war-on-terror captives home from Guantanamo this weekend -- two to Afghanistan and one to Pakistan, the Defense Department said yesterday.

In keeping with Pentagon policy, no details were released of the latest transfer from the remote prison camp, which has been soaked by rains from a string of hurricanes buffeting the Caribbean.

And there was no independent word from either allied governments Pakistan or Afghanistan on the identities of the captives.

The Pentagon announcement said the transfer reduced the detainee population to "approximately 255" housed in a series of prison camps at a sprawling complex overlooking the Caribbean.

PHILADELPHIA -- Two brothers who ran a pair of funeral homes and a crematorium admitted yesterday that they sold corpses to a company that trafficked in stolen body parts, a macabre scheme that left families aghast and wondering about the fate of their loved ones.

Louis and Gerald Garzone pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, theft, abusing corpses and welfare fraud.

The brothers allowed at least 244 corpses to be carved up without families' permission and without medical tests, prosecutors said. Skin, bones, tendons and other parts -- some of them diseased -- were then sold for dental implants, knee and hip replacements and other procedures.

The mastermind of the scheme, Michael Mastromarino, pleaded guilty Friday to hundreds of charges that could send him to prison for life. He is already serving 18 to 54 years for running the scam in New York.

Mr. Mastromarino's company, New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services, took bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Among the corpses plundered was that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke.