So much to cover after last night’s Panel for Education Policy’s meeting where proposals to phase out or close 22 city schools and add co-located schools to many others, including DeWitt Clinton High School. We’ll have a more in-depth story and look at all the ramifications in next week’s print edition. But for now, a few notes and thoughts from the meeting.

1) It really did feel like DeWitt Clinton High School’s last stand: a show of bravery in the face of certain defeat. While several Clinton supporters showed up, only three Clinton teachers (Kate Martin-Bridge, Alan Ettman and Harry Brandt) and two parents (Nana Obeng and Abdool Abdool) remained until the final verdict (they made up about a quarter of the audience at that point), which came just before 1 a.m. and pretty much confirmed their belief that a decision had already been made. But they wanted to witness it with their own eyes anyway.

2) One of the parents, Nana Obeng, whose son is a freshman at Clinton, took to yelling angrily at the panel as the night progressed. “They’re all sychophants,” Obeng said as he awaited a decision last night. “I want to see that it’s true, that they’ve already made up their minds before they got here.”

3) Only three politicians showed up in-person to speak at the meeting — Councilman Oliver Koppell who spoke specifically about Clinton, Councilman Charles Barron who did his best to incite the crowd (“We might as well act up and yell tonight cause they’re going to vote for everything anyway!”) and former School Board Chairman Bill Thompson who happily took the mic as the only mayoral hopeful in the house.

4) The most heated exchanges came between the Manhattan Borough President’s rep, Patrick Sullivan, and the mayoral appointees and DOE staffers at the meeting. Sullivan was combative all night long, basically calling out the mayoral appointees for being lawn furniture and yes men (and women) for the mayor. At one point, he said, “In 10 years, no one’s raised a hand against the mayor, because you know you’ll get fired if you do.” Panel member Judy Bergtraum responded, saying, “We’re here because we believe in what’s being done.”

5) The DOE made a big deal about how much the administration engages struggling schools before deciding to close them or co-locate new schools with older ones, but parents, teachers and administrators I spoke with said there was little outreach done to figure out the problems or see if there were solutions. The Clinton school community came up with a whole plan to improve the school but it fell on deaf ears, they said. Asked if the DOE engaged them and provided the school with the resources to make improvement, Principal Geraldine Ambrosio said simply, “No.”