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A snapshot from one of two Panel for Educational Policy meetings about school closures in 2011.

Boisterous protests against school closures have long been accused of lending a circus-like atmosphere to the annual meetings where the Panel for Educational Policy votes on closures. This year, though, the opposition will actually have three rings.

Three separate groups are planning protest actions during tonight’s PEP meeting, where the citywide school board is set to vote on — and presumably approve — 23 school closures and truncations. (Changes to two schools were taken off the table yesterday.)

City officials have vowed not to let the protests disrupt the panel’s proceedings, suggesting that panel members and protesters alike could be in for a long and potentially combative night. Last year, the panel approved 22 closures in two separate meetings that each lasted well past 1 a.m. In 2010, the panel’s vote on 20 school closures took place just before 4 a.m., after more than 10 hours of protests and public comment.

Tonight, the United Federation of Teachers, which has orchestrated the most substantial protests in the past, is planning to start its protest outside Brooklyn Technical High School but then constitute an alternate event, a “People’s PEP,” at P.S. 20, an elementary school with a 600-seat auditorium six blocks away that the union has rented for the evening. Union officials said teachers from the schools up for closure would be invited to give presentations about their schools at the P.S. 20 meeting.

Another group that has been active in opposing the closure proposals, the Coalition for Educational Justice, is taking a different approach: Instead of walking out from the meeting, CEJ members and those active in affiliated groups, including the Alliance for Quality Education and the Urban Youth Collaborative, are marching in protest to it. After a 5 p.m. rally, they’ll walk five blocks east on Dekalb Street to Brooklyn Tech, where they will continue to protest against the city’s proposed closures.

A press advisory for the CEJ event warns that protesters will use the “people’s mic” to amplify their voices during the panel meeting. And they won’t be alone using that strategy. A third protest set for tonight is by “Occupy the DOE,” which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement that popularized the human microphone tactic. (more…)

Legacy students sat on the panel to present anecdotal and data-driven reasons why Legacy should remain open

By the time Wednesday’s closure hearing began, students at Manhattan’s Legacy School for Integrated Studies had already said everything they could to support their school. For weeks, they had been making a case for their school, on the Today Show and WPIX, NY1 and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter.

And yet, revved up from a multi-school rally in Union Square, they said it all again.

In the school’s packed cafeteria, students said once again that their new principal, Joan Mosely, and the many new teachers hadn’t had time to turn the school around. Last year’s poor academic performance, they said, reflected stricter standards and higher expectations. They even made a formal presentation about the school’s performance and demographics.

Their arguments were seconded by teachers, parents and representatives of several elected officials, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, both candidates for mayor.

But Marc Sternberg, a Department of Education deputy chancellor, said the city did not want to wait for improvement that might never arrive.

“The question ultimately is, how patient can we be?” Sternberg said. “Our inclination is to act on behalf of our future students quickly.”

Students and teachers said the closure proposal had in some ways dampened the mood at the school. But they pointed to a silver lining: that the sustained protest against the city’s plan had given them purpose, public speaking skills, and an esprit de corps. (more…)

Student protesters unfurled a banner listing names of the schools that could close this year.

Students from at least five city high schools walked out of classes this afternoon in opposition to the city’s school closure proposals. (more…)

A small but raucous crowd turned out for a closure hearing at Academy of Business Community and Development Tuesday.

When senior Omar Herara ranked Academy of Business and Community Development as one of his top high school choices four years ago, he admits he didn’t know it was an all-boys school or much else about it either.

“At first, it was an accident,” Herara said. “I chose it because it had ‘business’ in the name.”

Herara, who wants to become an entrepreneur, said the decision turned out to be serendipitous. At a hearing on the school’s future Tuesday evening, he said he now viewed the school with a sense of pride.

“I hope to come back and visit ABCD when I graduate,” said Herara, who will study business management at Monroe College in New Rochelle in the fall.

That prospect looks increasingly bleak. Herara is the only senior who is on pace to graduate this year, one of several reasons that the Department of Education is taking the unusual step to completely shutter the ABCD middle and high schools at the end of the school year. Most schools are phased out, one year at a time, but officials said that low enrollment — coupled with poor academic performance — made it virtually impossible to survive on the system’s funding formula, which allocates money on a per-pupil basis. (more…)

Students and teachers from two high schools on the city’s chopping block are planning to join in protest on Wednesday — and they’re asking their allies from across the city to join in.

The Union Square rally comes during the final week of hearings before the Panel for Educational Policy, which has never rejected a city proposal, votes on 25 school closure proposals Feb. 9.

Students at Manhattan’s Legacy School for Integrated Studies are planning to walk out of their classes and head for Union Square just four hours before their school’s closure hearing. The walkout is the latest in a series of high-profile protest actions that have included a phone-banking session and a guerrilla appearance on “The Today Show” — activities chronicled in a video posted to YouTube over the weekend by the Save Legacy Coalition.  (more…)

Teacher Damaris Mercado speaks at the closure hearing for Jane Addams High School Jan. 25.

The city’s bid to close Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers will proceed without the principal who helmed the school during its recent slide.

Department of Education officials said Wednesday, moments after a public hearing about the closure plan, that this is Sharon Smalls’ last week as principal at Jane Addams.

Smalls’ resignation comes as city investigators are scrutinizing how her administration handed out course credits after teachers reported that she had been giving students math and history credits for classes such as cosmetology and tourism.

Smalls was present at the closure hearing but declined to comment on the investigation or her resignation.

Stephen Tavano, the United Federation of Teachers chapter leader at Jane Addams, told reporters that morale among teachers has been down since the news broke three months ago that the crediting problems had put some students at risk of not graduating and that an investigation would begin.

“The staff is down in the dumps. We’ve been stressed under her so-called leadership,” Tavano said. “It’s emotional for the teachers and guidance counselors.”

But of the dozens of teachers and parents who took the microphone at Wednesday evening’s hearing to defend the school’s career training programs, few mentioned Smalls. Two of the teachers told me during the hearing that they were not aware of her resignation.

Through tears, several teachers and graduates told Department of Education officials that the school deserved to stay open because of its 82-year legacy in the Morrisania, Bronx, community and its state-certified Career and Technical Education programs in nursing, cosmetology, and tourism. (more…)

If the Department of Education goes through with its plan to close Manhattan Theatre Lab High School, the city will lose a rare option for students who want a rich arts education but lack previous training, members of the school community argued at a public hearing about the closure plan Tuesday night.

Manhattan Theatre Lab students performing during a talent show that preceded its closure hearing

Manhattan Theatre Lab, an eight-year-old high school on the Martin Luther King Campus, has a lower-than-average graduation rate, a failing grade on its most recent city report card, and serious academic shortcomings.

And while most students defended the school at the hearing, three seniors who testified said Principal Evelyn Collins had not given sufficient attention to the school’s lackluster academics. Collins took over in 2006 after a tumultuous period that included the midyear resignation of the school’s founding principal, the education director of a local theater company.

But Manhattan Theatre Lab also has a rich arts curriculum in drama, dance, vocal music, and set design — and it does not require auditions to be accepted. That sets the school apart from other arts schools, including the elite LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, located across the street.

Many students told GothamSchools they had auditioned for LaGuardia or other selective schools but were not accepted. They said they had felt unprepared next to other eighth-graders from around the city who had been fine-tuning their craft through private training since an early age.

Manhattan Theatre Lab’s open-door policy has attracted a student body that is 96 percent black and Hispanic, at least two-thirds free lunch-eligible. About 10 percent of students require special education services.

At LaGuardia, nearly 70 percent of students are white or Asian, and less than 1 percent of students have special needs. (more…)

A performing arts school that the city wants to close has put together a highlights reel to make the case for staying open.

Manhattan Theatre Lab High School uploaded a 20-minute video called “We Are More Than Data” to YouTube late last week. The video contains clips from inspired student performances meant to capture qualities that the school’s 46 percent graduation rate and rock-bottom progress report score do not.

It also includes interviews with several students. In the video, Keyana Griffin says she knows other students in her East Harlem neighborhood could benefit from the confidence-booster of participating in the school’s arts programs. (more…)

Parents and children hold a brief press conference to oppose the closure of P.S. 161's middle school.

At the same time that supporters of Satellite III were laying blame for their school’s decline Thursday night, backers of Crown Heights’ P.S. 161 said they were confident their new principal could reverse that school’s slide.

Three years ago, P.S. 161 was an in-demand primary school, with more than three quarters of its students performing at or above grade-level. This year, the school is under-enrolled, D-rated, and set to lose its middle school grades, according to a Department of Education proposal.

Citing the school’s low test scores, which show less than half of students passing state tests, and a steep drop in enrollment between fifth and sixth grades, city officials said truncating the middle school grades will benefit the school in the long-run. Without a middle school, they said, the school could focus efforts to boost achievement in the elementary grades.

“Let me be clear that the school is not closing,” Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg told the crowd of 70-some parents, students, and education activists peppered through the school auditorium. “We see the truncation of the middle school as an opportunity to focus on the existing strengths of the school and reinvest in what is working here.”

Parents and community leaders said the middle school remains a high point in a district with dwindling middle school options.

“The CEC is very concerned about what is going on in general in District 17 this January,” said Claudette Agard, a member of the elected Community Education Council for the district. “We have four schools on this [closure] list. We are not defending failure, but the failure that you are citing and you are speaking of is not under this leadership.”

PTA President Demetrius Lawrence, the father of two current students and one graduate, said the school’s new principal, Michael Johnson, has the skills to turn the middle school around but needs more time. (more…)

At the first school closure hearing of the year last week, students and parents said their school’s youth was a reason to give it another chance. On Wednesday night, families and staff at Brooklyn’s P.S. 19, the Roberto Clemente school, appealed to decades of existence as a reason the school should stay open.

“This has been a school that has been called Roberto Clemente for many, many many years.” said Barbara Medina, who attended the school in the 1970s and sent her son to it in the 1990s. “The name should carry on.”

P.S. 19, located in Williamsburg, was the lowest-scoring elementary school on the city’s progress reports this year. Families have spurned the school in droves in recent years, causing enrollment to drop to about 350 from more than 1,200 a decade ago.

Yet about 100 people turned out to protest the city’s plan to close the school, which the Panel for Educational Policy is set to vote on next month. They said more could have been done to prevent the school from dropping from a B grade in 2009 to an F this year and to soften the impact of the enrollment drop. (more…)