City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools

clipped from www.nytimes.com City Panel Approves Closing of 19 Schools By SHARON OTTERMAN and JENNIFER MEDINA In a contentious meeting that drew more than eight hours of public testimony, a city board voted early Wednesday morning to close 19 schools for poor performance, despite the protests from hundreds of observers who repeatedly drowned out the meeting with cheers, shouts and boos. Enlarge This Image The New York Times More than 300 speakers addressed the board, the Panel for Educational Policy, beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn 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,

Why are most if not all of the schools are Minority Schools?