The law passed this summer requires the DOE to issue an “educational impact statement” and hold a public hearing on any proposed changes to the way school building space is used, and then to put changes to a vote before the city-wide Panel for Educational Policy.

Last month, DOE officials notified the principals of Red Hook’s PAVE Academy and P.S. 15 that the charter school would remain in the P.S. 15 building, even though PAVE originally agreed to leave the building at the end of this school year. At the time, DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte said that there was no need to follow the new rules since a hearing had been held before the charter school moved into the building two years ago.

But after protests from the district’s Community Education Council members, DOE officials said this week they will follow the new procedure after all.

CEC President James Devor drafted a resolution this week calling on the DOE to follow the new law in the case of P.S. 15. The resolution also states that if the DOE does not follow the new procedure in making space decisions regarding P.S. 15 and PAVE, the CEC would join any lawsuit designed to force the DOE to adhere to the law.

Yesterday the Office of Portfolio Planning’s Courtney McNally confirmed to Devor by email that the DOE would follow the new rules. In the email, McNally wrote that the DOE wants to put the P.S. 15/PAVE space sharing proposal before the PEP during its January 26, 2010 meeting and the DOE will need to post the educational impact statement by December 8.

(Devor said that he planned to put the resolution to a vote a tonight’s CEC meeting anyway to document the dispute. Update: The CEC passed the resolution unanimously, Devor said.)

The P.S. 15 building has emerged as one of the most contested fronts in the ongoing conflict about whether charter schools should be able to share district school buildings. When PAVE requested this summer to stay in the building past the two years in its original agreement, P.S. 15 parents were fearful that the charter’s expansion would increase their class sizes and take over their resource rooms.

In an email, and in the resolution being considered tonight, Devor emphasized that he and the CEC have not made a judgment about the space-sharing proposal and extension request on their merits. But the CEC has insisted that the DOE go through the reporting and hearing process required for major changes in space use before PAVE be allowed to stay.

A major question still unanswered for the schools is whether PAVE will be permitted to admit a new incoming class of students next year, thus using more space in the building. In June, a DOE spokeswoman said that it was too early to say whether the charter would be allowed to expand in the P.S. 15 building. The DOE has not responded to several queries as to whether officials plan to allow the school to grow if it stays in the P.S. 15 building.

Last year, City Council members complained that the DOE announced school closures without first discussing them with community members. Like other parent advocates, council members argued that the DOE’s actions were in violation of the state’s education law, which requires the chancellor to “consult with the affected community district education council” before closing or substantially changing schools.

But despite the outcry, the district-wide community education councils aren’t any more in the loop this year.

“The CECs were notified the same day the staff was told” at each school, DOE spokeswoman Melody Meyer told me today.

For District 15′s CEC, at least, that notification came in the form of an e-mail yesterday afternoon, after the principal of PS 27 had already been told her school would be closing in June, according to the council’s president, Jennifer Stringfellow.

“We were not consulted, we were notified,” Stringfellow told me. “It’s just so crazy that the same process just keeps happening over and over.”

On the Insideschools blog, CEC 3 member Jennifer Freeman wrote last week that no one from the DOE had spoken with the council about the prospect of closing MS 44.

And it’s not just elected parent leaders who want to discuss school closures with DOE officials before the closures are finalized. In a press release about MS 44, the Center for Immigrant Families, an Upper West Side community organization, said that such conversations could provide a basis for “an equitable school system.”

Here’s CIF’s full statement:

The ways in which NYC’s current education system marginalizes and discounts the voices of parents, educators, and community members is well-illustrated by the DOE’s latest announcement that IS44 in District 3 is being shut down. The following are some questions that we believe need to be addressed: Where was the community process leading to this closing? Were parents, educators, and community members part of this decision to determine what is best for their community? An article in the Times says another school will be created to replace it, but who is part of that process deciding what the needs of the community are and what kind of school it should be? Is the school being shut down before anybody knows what is going to happen to the sixth graders who would be entering the school in the Fall? How are the remaining seventh and eighth graders going to feel at a school labeled as failing that is about to close down? And who will decide whether the new school will be accessible to all our families, or, instead, be another school that privileges white, middle class families, as is increasingly becoming the case in our District and, indeed, across the City.

To address such questions related to the future of IS 44 and its students and to have an equitable school system that serves the needs of all our children, we believe we must begin from a foundation of building and strengthening meaningful parent, school, and community partnerships and creating a system that has communities at its center at every level of decision-making.