If there is widespread opposition to the proposed closure and re-imagining of Junior High School 80, Norwood’s oldest and largest middle school, it was not apparent at a Department of Education hearing on Monday night.

In what amounted to the school community’s last and best chance to voice its opposition to the DOE’s controversial new “turnaround” program, which would dramatically change the makeup of JHS 80, only a handful of people, including one parent, two students and one teacher, chose to give testimony.

Grace Siemer, a 1944 graduate of the Mosholu Parkway school, when it was known as PS 80 and served students from kindergarten to 8th grade, said she was disappointed with the lack of turnout.

“We should have seen fliers on every car and light post around the school,” she said, adding that no local elected officials attended or gave testimony (representatives for State Senator Gustavo Rivera and Councilman Oliver Koppell, however, were in attendance). “Everybody should have come out.”

The school’s auditorium, where the hearing took place, was dominated by empty seats. Only about 50 people attended and many were DOE staffers, union representatives or local community board members.

Those who did speak blasted the DOE’s decision to abruptly drop a previous plan to transform the struggling school, commonly known as MS 80, under another improvement model called “re-start,” which was imposed on the school last summer.

“We’re not pawns, we’re people,” said Ricardo Martinez, an MS 80 graduate who lives in Bedford Park.

Many students, teachers and parents say the school was heading in the right direction under the re-start model and behind the leadership of former Principal Lovey Mazique-Rivera, who was suddenly replaced by interim Principal Lauren Reiss last month.

Dayana Nunez, a math teacher at the school who was hired by Mazique-Rivera eight years ago and was the only faculty member to testify on Monday night, described the upheaval at the school as “terrible.”

On Friday, March 16, Nunez left work and said goodbye to her principal, not once thinking it would be the last time she would speak to Mazique-Rivera as her boss. The following Monday morning, an emergency meeting was convened to introduce Reiss as the interim principal.

Nunez said the whole school was an “emotional wreck” after Mazique-Rivera’s dismissal, but that she and other teachers have maintained their professionalism and focused on their students and preparing them for state testing, which began this week.

“In terms of my work and students,” Nunez said, “it doesn’t make a difference.”

The DOE says it needed to place MS 80, which has struggled with state test scores over the past several years, into the turnaround program in order to secure $1.8 million in extra funding over the next two years.

The state funding was awarded to MS 80, last summer when it entered into the re-start program, which paired the school with an outside support organization, Abyssinian Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that works with schools in Harlem.

But the funding was suspended when the city DOE could not come to an agreement with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the nation’s largest teachers union, over formal evaluations. The DOE wants to eliminate the appeal process for teachers who receive low scores on their evaluations and the UFT insists there must be some way for teachers to appeal.

Cecilia Donovan, the head of MS 80’s parents association and the only parent to testify, directed her remarks at the DOE and criticized its entire approach at MS 80, including the decision to replace Mazique-Rivera.

“I went to college because I had Lovey Riveras in place to help,” she said.

Later in her testimony, which lasted beyond the allotted two minutes, she scolded the DOE. “You give support to a school, you don’t close it down,” she said, adding, “You’re totally messing it up.”

Several people who testified implored the DOE to keep the name and number of the school, which has been in place since 1924. Part of the turnaround program calls for a name change and the DOE says MS 80 will become “New School 575” if the turnaround proposal is approved by the Panel for Education Policy at a meeting in Brooklyn on April 26.

“I don’t like that 575,” Martinez said. “It sounds like a pair of jeans.”

Benedit Medina, a 12-year-old sixth-grader who was one of two students to testify, sat in a section with about a 10 other students who held up signs reading, “We Love MS 80.”

“I think it’s just wrong,” Benedit said. “We have a bad reputation and we’re working to get better. But how can we get better if we’re not MS 80?”