After teachers, parents and students blasted members of the city's Panel for Educational Policy for hours at a heavily-attended forum in Brooklyn, the panel voted to close 19 city schools at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Things got heated right off the bat as more than 300 people signed up to speak inside the packed auditorium at Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Greene.

Many who attended the meeting said they, themselves, should be the ones in charge of the schools' futures.

They also claim the Department of Education is using flawed methods to decide which schools to close and that the panel is out of touch.

"To say that students are your first priority is ridiculous when you view students as just statistics and not humans," shouted one parent.

"These schools have been, unfortunately, failing our students for a number of years. And it's time for us to really grab these schools and phase them out and put new schools in their place," countered Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott.

Amid the loud objections, some held out hope that their schools would be spared the axe.

"The panel takes up one stage, we take up a whole arena. So I think that if they honestly feel that they support the students and they want to help the students then they will keep it open," said Paul Robeson High School student Victor Rodriguez.

Over the past several months, a series of public hearings about the closings at hearings mandated by changes to the mayoral control law. Before Tuesday night, school closings were solely determined by the DOE.

A 20th school that was slated to closed, Alfred E. Smith Careers and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, was granted a reprieve last week and the panel will vote next month whether to close it.

"We've had a lot of feedback, a lot of process in the community, and we've heard from a lot of people and now I'm looking forward to the vote this season," said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

"These schools have been unfortunately failing our students for a number of years and it's time for us to really grab these schools and phase them out and put new schools in their place," Walcott said. "We have a record of really showing that we can do that. We've phased out over 91 schools since this administration has started, and all the schools, the campuses that have replaced these schools, have higher graduation rates and that's what we want to do with these schools."

An overflow of protesters gathered outside the school Tuesday night, where the United Federation of Teachers set up a stage and a large viewing screen to allow those who were not admitted into the meeting to sound off.

"What this clearly shows us is that people are engaged and they want their schools to stay open," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. "All these people want to have good schools, and they think they've been abandoned and not supported by the Department of Ed and the City of New York."

"If I was a mechanic, you would give me the tools to fix your car, but as a teacher you don't give me the material I need to educate the student," said teacher Deborah Sherlock. "And what's going to happen down the road? What kind of country is this going to be, if we can't educate our students?"

"The participation that I've seen in this school closure issue this year has really been extraordinary and something that we really haven't seen a lot before,” said Kim Sweet of Advocates for Children of New York.

The mayor-controlled panel has never voted against anything the DOE has requested.