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We’re stationed right now at the Prospect Heights Campus in Brooklyn, where the Panel for Educational Policy is set to vote tonight on two dozen school closure proposals.

It’s not the usual venue for a contentious panel meeting — the longest meetings have all been held at Brooklyn Technical High School — but the closures are also not the usual type.

Instead of phasing out the schools and slowly opening new ones, the city is proposing to close the schools at the end of the year and reopen them immediately according to a federally prescribed school improvement strategy known as “turnaround.” Under the city’s proposals, which have elicited intense opposition, the schools would get new names, new teachers, and, often, new principals.

For an overview of the controversial policy at the heart of tonight’s meeting, check out our two-part primer. And stay tuned for up-to-the-minute coverage of the panel meeting, which Chancellor Dennis Walcott warned earlier today could go late into the night.

11:58 p.m. And it’s over: All of the turnaround closure votes are done and have passed. Between February and today, the panel has approved 44 school closures to begin or take place this summer — far more than in any previous year.

The panel still has to vote on 17 proposals about school space usage, 10 involving charter schools. They are proceeding quickly through the votes.

11:54 p.m. A teacher from John Dewey High School has broken out in tears behind reporters.

According to the thin crowd of teachers who shout the tally after each vote, those who vote yes are “puppets” and those who cast no votes are “heroes.”

11:48 p.m. Eight to four is the pattern of the night. The seven mayoral appointees who are present tonight are voting for each turnaround plan, as is the Staten Island borough president’s appointee, Diane Peruggia. The four other borough presidents’ appointees are voting against each proposal, in a reprise of the vote count from school closure hearings in February and last year.

One teacher has taken to shouting, “Let’s count … is it eight?” each time a vote is tallied. Other audience members are joining in the chorus.

11:46 p.m. The voting has begun. The panel members dispatch with Queens representative Dmytro Fedkowskyj’s resolution against turnaround quickly, voting 8-4 against it. (more…)

We’re stationed right now at Brooklyn Technical High School, where the Panel for Educational policy is meeting to vote on the fates of 11 schools the city wants to close. The panel will also vote on whether to allow half a dozen new schools to open.

There are three different protests planned for the meeting and we’ll be covering all of them, along with the comments made by members of the public who came outside of an organized protest. Stay tuned all night — we’ll be at Brooklyn Tech until the last vote is cast.

(Just a reminder: Our live-blog is in reverse chronological order. If you want to read from the beginning, start at the end of the post.)

12:01 a.m. The votes are complete, the protesters gone, the panel members departed — and now the reporters are leaving, too, after talking with Chancellor Dennis Walcott about his first Panel for Educational Policy vote on closures since becoming chancellor last April.

“I understand the emotions involved,” Walcott told the reporters. “But sometimes we have to make tough choices that people find unpopular.’”

11:21 p.m. In an anti-climactic moment, the panel unanimously approves a slate of Department of Education contracts totaling nearly $85 million. (Nearly $80 million of that was for a single contract, a one-year extension of a contract with a company that provides school busing services.

11:19 p.m. A lot of people are feeling unhappy after tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy votes. But not State Sen. Daniel Squadron, who had supported the expansion of Brooklyn’s P.S. 8 that was the only proposal to win unanimous approval tonight. “Tonight’s vote to approve the new P.S. 8 middle school is great news for Brooklyn!” Squadron says in a statement.

Members of the Panel for Educational Policy vote during tonight's meeting.

11:18 p.m. And the voting on school closures and co-locations is over. Each proposal before the Panel for Educational Policy has been approved, and next fall 22 schools or portions of schools will start phasing out. An additional school, the Academy of Business and Career Development, will have disappeared forever.

Diane Peruggia, the Staten Island borough president’s appointee to the panel, abstained from voting on the closure of the only Staten Island school on the list. The appointees of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro typically do not vote along with their fellow borough presidents’ appointees. Also, Molinaro had said he would not visit P.S. 14 until a new school opened in the building, signaling that he supported the city’s closure proposal. But parents on Staten Island were upset that the borough was poised to experience its first school closure under the Bloomberg administration.

11:06 p.m. As the panel races through its agenda items, which include co-locations of new and existing schools in addition to closures and truncations, the same vote count repeats itself over and over. The four borough presidents’ appointees vote against each proposals, while Mayor Bloomberg’s appointees line up to support them. The only exceptions are for two schools that are actually adding grades. There, the Bronx and Manhattan representatives on the panel abstained from the votes; everyone else lent their support.

11:05 p.m. The next five votes are for two closures (of Aspire Prep and Satellite III middle schools), two middle school truncations (of the Academy for Social Entrepreneurship), and two-colocations (of a new middle school in Aspire Prep’s building and the expansion of Brooklyn’s P.S. 8 into a neighboring high school building). The expansion of P.S. 8 was approved unanimously, the first proposal to win full approval tonight. The four borough presidents’ appointees voted against the other plans.

11:02 p.m. The voting has begun. The first schools up for closure are Gompers, Gateway, Jane Addams, and Grace Dodge. Repeating a familiar pattern, the appointees of the borough presidents of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens oppose each closure, but they are outvoted by the mayor’s appointees and the schools will begin to phase out this fall.

11 p.m. Eduardo Marti, the City University of New York’s panel appointee, says he plans to vote in favor of each school closure proposal. “I think this is a very courageous action we’re taking tonight,” he says.

10:45 p.m. At this point, the audience has dwindled from thousands at the peak of the meeting to just about 50 people. There are parents from Brooklyn and the Bronx, some students from Legacy School for Integrated Studies, and a handful of stalwart Occupy protesters. (more…)

Supporters and opponents of school closures were among those attending tonight's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

For the second night this week, Anna is stationed at Brooklyn Tech High School, sending us dispatches from the meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy. The meeting is once again likely to be a long marathon of a night as the public lines up to comment on school closures and space changes proposed by the Bloomberg administration.

At the end of the night, or maybe the beginning of tomorrow, members of the panel — the latest version of the city school board — will vote on whether to adopt the proposals, which could close up to 12 schools and make significant changes in another nine. The panel is controlled by a majority of members appointed directly by the mayor.

School safety officers filling out overtime sheets after the PEP meeting.

1:20 a.m. One final update, with a visual: The last people left at Brooklyn Tech were about a dozen school safety officers submitting their overtime. The first bell rings at 8 a.m.

1:04 a.m. She won’t be speaking with reporters, but Chancellor Cathie Black did make sure to have the last word. “We all want to say a very large thank you to the parents, the teachers, and the students who came out earlier this evening,” she said. “These are never early decisions. A great deal of time and thought and  angst has gone into them. A big thank you to everybody.”

By “early,” Black probably meant “easy,” Anna notes. And with that, our reporter heads into the night.

1:02 a.m. All of the contracts under the panel’s review have passed.

12:51 p.m. Often, the panel makes quick work of any proposed contracts. But tonight, panel members are questioning a three-year, multi-million-dollar proposal for a package of 16 contracts to provide online coursework. The largest, a $4.5 million bid from Apex Learning, would allow schools to offer Advanced Placement courses virtually.

Investing in online learning would allow schools that are phasing out to offer advanced courses even as their student bodies and teaching rosters dwindle, says Deputy Chancellor John White.

But Lisette Nieves, one of the panel’s eight mayoral appointees, is challenging White’s logic. She says that would be true only if the department urged phase-out schools to challenge their students — but it doesn’t.

“I did vote for the phase out,” Nieves says. “But there’s a difference between saying leadership is committed to providing a basic service versus an advanced servive. I just want to make sure there’s an incentive. I don’t inherently buy into the idea that there’s an incentive.”

12:40 p.m. Despite pressure from reporters, Chancellor Cathie Black is “unavailable for comment,” DOE officials are saying.

This is a particular problem for television and radio reporters, who couldn’t hear a word of what Black said during her introductory remarks because she was being booed so loudly. The only journalist who can use the audio, Anna reports, is the Spanish-language NY1 Noticias reporter, who plans to translate Black’s comments and run the script.

Last year, then-Chancellor Joel Klein huddled with reporters after the school closure Panel for Educational Policy meeting ended — and that was at 4 a.m.

12:35 p.m. The voting is over, just 10 minutes after it started. The panel voted to close 12 more schools, bringing the total closures approved this week to 22. (more…)

Attendees lined up outside Brooklyn Tech for tonight's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.

We’re stationed right now at Brooklyn Technical High School, where the Panel for Educational policy is meeting to vote on the fates of 11 schools the city wants to close. The panel will also vote on whether to allow half a dozen new schools to open.

For an overview of the schools under debate at tonight’s meeting, listen to this WNYC appearance by our own Maura Walz. Maura discussed what the schools slated for closure are saying in their own defense and how the city has responded to their argument for remaining open.

2:06 a.m. End scene.

1:30 a.m. Anna sends more notes. We learn that when Sullivan asked Black about space at Brandeis, a question that elicited shouts from the crowd, the new chancellor had several responses.

“She first asked people to quiet down,” Anna reports. “Then they booed her.” Finally, Black mimicked the protestors, saying, “OOOOOOH.”

Also: “Mulgrew joined the UFT hecklers at the end,” Anna reports. As voting began, audience members hurled shouts at the stage. A NY1 Noticias reporter tells Anna that Mulgrew was one of the first to yell. “Puppets!” he shouted.

1:26 a.m. Who voted no? Some phase outs passed with support from non-mayoral appointees. The gradual closures of the School for Community Research and Learning and Monroe Academy for Business/Law High School both found support from representatives from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Panel members from Queens and Brooklyn also voted to support the closure of the Academy for Collaborative Education, which will not phase out over time but will close for good at the end of this year.

That was not the case for the Success Charter Network schools. All three proposals related to the schools (including two co-locations and a proposal to expand the K-5 school to include sixth grade) received support only from mayoral appointees, Anna reports.

Phase-out votes that were more controversial also fell along these lines. Only the panel’s eight mayoral appointees supported closing the Urban Assembly Academy for History and Citizenship for Young Men, which had a large turnout of teachers and students in its defense.

1:19 a.m. Every single proposal passes. The panel has voted to phase out or close 10 schools next year. Union activists stand up and yell, “fraud!” The meeting adjourns. (more…)

Anna and Maura were on the scene of the Panel for Educational Policy’s meeting Tuesday night to decide on proposed school closures. They provided dispatches until the meeting’s bitter end, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

The Panel for Educational Policy votes to close one of 19 schools slated for phase-out by the DOE, as school supporters look on.

4 a.m. After a two-hour protest that closed the streets in Fort Greene; nearly nine hours of testimony by concerned elected officials, parents, teachers, and students; and a series of votes that underscored the divide between Mayor Bloomberg and panel appointees from most of city’s boroughs, the Panel for Educational Policy determined early this morning that 20 city schools, both young and old, small and large, will begin to close this fall. We’ll have more about the implications of the panel’s decisions starting sometime tomorrow afternoon.

But for now, with Brooklyn Tech empty, at least for a few hours, and Anna and Maura safely in taxis, we’re closing the blog for the night. Be sure to scroll through all 70+ entries to see exactly how the marathon meeting unfolded.

3:43 a.m. Maura managed to corner mayoral appointee David Chang before he left the building. “These are tough decisions but I think they’re all thoughtful,” he said. “I’m convinced the change is for the better.”

3:42 a.m. City Hall just sent out a press release with statements from Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein. The release is dated Jan. 26 — the day the PEP meeting began, but not when it ended.

Here’s what Bloomberg had to say:

This morning, following a 45-day consultation period in which thousands of New Yorkers participated in dozens of hearings and parent meetings or registered their views online, the Panel for Educational Policy took the difficult but necessary step of voting to phase-out and replace chronically underperforming schools. I’ve listened to the arguments carefully, and I appreciate the traditions of these schools, but we cannot continue to send our children to schools that have failed them for years. (more…)