Some 2000 people -- including many parents with young children in tow -- filed into the Brooklyn Tech auditorium Tuesday night for a six hour meeting, the first of two Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) sessions this week to consider the closure of low-performing schools and the opening  of new schools to replace them.  It came as no surprise to anyone who has followed the stories of school phase-outs and closures, that the Panel, consisting largely of mayoral appointees, voted to close 10 schools and approved the expansion of four others.

For those who didn't make it out on the icy evening, GothamSchools reporters live-blogged the event,  and ourSchoolsNYC hosted a Twitter feed.  Video of the event, which got rowdy and nasty at times, is on NY 1,

It was after midnight by the time the panel voted to close two high schools in Brooklyn: Paul Robeson and Metropolitan Corporate Academy;  four in the Bronx: Monroe Academy  for Business/Law High School, School for Community Research and Learning,Urban Assembly Academy for History and Culture, and New Day Academy; and four in  Manhattan:  Academy of Environmental Science Secondary High School, IS 195, KAPPA II, and the Academy of Collaborative Education. Several of those schools were opened as replacements for  large neighborhood schools, shut down for poor performance during Chancellor Joel Klein's tenure.<!--more-->

One of the more contentious items on the agenda was the opening of a new Harlem Success school, Upper West Side Success Academy in the Brandeis High School building. Busloads of Harlem Success parents and their children attended the PEP  meeting to support the new school, but at a District 3 meeting last week, many parents voiced their opposition. Jennifer Freeman, Upper West Side parent and Insideschools.org blogger, was at that meeting.

"The only people who supported putting the elementary school in Brandeis were employees of the Success Academies organization and a few parents of four year olds," she writes, who may be unaware of needs in the community, such as "where will today's bulging population of elementary students go to middle school, and whether the needs of the 900 students who applied for the 100  seats in the new Frank McCourt school deserve consideration."

Other parents of young children on the Upper West Side say that because some desirable Upper West Side public schools are over-crowded, theyappreciate the option of applying to a charter school in the Brandeis building.

But Freeman wonders if those parents of four year olds have ever considered why the options available to District 3 middle or high-schoolers are less important than theirs. "Now," she says, "with the PEP voting to approve the siting of Upper West Success at Brandeis, the DOE has chosen whose options will be expanded and whose curtailed."

For more on the story of closing schools, read "A student's view: How not to close a school," and take our poll:Should low-performing schools be closed?

And, if you missed Tuesday's meeting, there will be another one this Thursday night: same time, same place (6 p.m. at Brooklyn Tech High School)  where the PEP will vote on another 13 school closures.