More than 300 speakers addressed the board, the Panel for Educational Policy, beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday atBrooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. By the time the panel began voting at 2:40 a.m. they had heard a litany of complaints from hundreds of parents, students, teachers and administrators and just a handful of speakers who said they supported closing the schools.
But as expected, the panel overwhelmingly approved the closures recommended by the Education Department. The votes to close the schools fell along political lines, with the appointees of the Manhattan, Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn borough presidents voting against the closings while each of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s appointees approved them without question. Nearly every school shutdown was approved on a 9 to 4 vote, with the representative for the Staten Island borough president mostly siding with the mayor’s appointees, and the audience shouting “shame on you” and “disgrace.”