They saw it coming.
Officials at Norman Thomas High School warned the Education Department in 2004 that a spike in enrollment after other nearby schools were shuttered had created "an overcrowding situation that dooms us to failure."
Last month, their fears came true. It's now among 15 high schools slated for closure.
"Are they trying to fix the schools or ... trying to destroy them?" asked Nick Licari, a social studies teacher at the midtownManhattan school.
The Bloomberg administration has closed 21 large high schools since 2002. Critics say those left standing have been flooded with students, causing enrollment to balloon, attendance to drop and crime to spike.
At Norman Thomas - where officials will hold a hearing about the closure tonight - a building meant for 2,000 students saw enrollment jump to 3,000 in 2005 after three large Manhattan high schools were closed.
"I think there was collateral damage to the remaining large schools," said Clara Hemphill, author of the "The New Marketplace" study for
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