The Department of Education voted this month to close down nearly two dozen schools throughout the city due to poor performance, a controversial decision that’s drawn outrage from students, teachers and parents alike.

Included on the list of closures is John F. Kennedy in Marble Hill, which serves a number of students from across the northwest Bronx and is one of the last large high schools left in the borough. The school will be phased out starting next year and close completely by 2014. It will be replaced by two smaller schools.

The DOE has been shuttering large city schools that it deems failing since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the agency back in 2002. This year, eight of the 22 schools slated for closure are in the Bronx.

Kennedy has long been plagued by poor student performance and dismal reviews from the city — it received two C’s and a D on the DOE’s “report card” the last three years — and the school had a graduation rate of just 46 percent last year.

In June, Kennedy’s principal of five years, Anthony Rotunno, resigned amidst scandal after his staff members were accused of pocketing thousands of dollars raised at school bake sales and other fund-raisers.

But critics of the city’s school closure tactic say that large schools like Kennedy are set up to fail. They argue that the school serves large numbers of high-needs students without ample funding and resources from the city.

Public hearings hosted by the DOE erupted in anger this month. Last week, leaders from Sistas & Brothas United (SBU), the youth organizing arm of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, were among those arrested during a protest outside the agency’s headquarters on Chambers Street in downtown Manhattan.

SBU helped organize the press conference and rally. Director Maria Fernandez and four other leaders from the group were arrested for making a human chain to block the sidewalk outside the DOE’s building, in what Fernandez described as an act of “civil disobedience.” “You shut our schools down, we shut your streets down,” Fernandez said.

Later that week, the group staged a student walkout during a public hearing in Brooklyn, when the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy officially voted to close Kennedy and several other Bronx schools.

“They may have voted to phase out my school, but the battle is not over,” said Kennedy senior Ahmani Croom, who spoke at the hearing. “We will continue to fight for the resources and support that we need.”