By Yepoka Yeebo
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The city must keep open 19 schools it tried to close for poor performance, according to a state appellate court ruling on Thursday.
The ruling affects five Manhattan schools, including two in Harlem and two in East Harlem. The city will be forced to place students in the schools, some of which expect less than 12 new students in the fall the New York Times reports.
The decision upholds a March ruling from a lower court, and is a blow to the Bloomberg administration's attempts to revitalize the city's education system by shutting down failing schools.
The decision is a victory for the New York's teacher's union, which sued the city to stop the school closings.
“No one is above the law, and every court that has looked at this issue has ruled decisively that the Department of Education violated the law when it tried to close these schools,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.
The court found that the Department of Education failed to reveal the true impact of closing the schools, as required by a 2009 state law about mayoral control of schools.
The five schools originally slated for closure were Central’s Harlem’s Academy of Collaborative Education, East Harlem’s Academy of Environmental Science, the Harlem Choir Academy, East Harlem’s KAPPA II school and Murray Hill’s Norman Thomas High School.
