The Department of Education is set to close 19 schools that will disrupt the lives of more than 13,000 students – the most recent example of Joel Klein's misguided educational policy.

Last week, many of these students joined thousands of frustrated parents and angry community leaders who sat through the nine-hour hearing held by the Department of Education's Panel for Educational Policy, a panel controlled by the mayor, searching for answers. They left empty-handed.

That is why the United Federation of Teachers, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a broad coalition of elected officials are suing the Department of Education. In closing these 19 schools, the DOE and the City Schools Chancellor Klein flouted the letter of the law; they ignored entire communities, failed in their eight-year tenure to provide support services to struggling schools and ignored our neediest students.

The Department of Education chose not to do the required analysis of how school closings would affect the students, who would potentially be displaced, particularly special needs students. They failed to analyze the effects of the closings on other already overcrowded public schools nearby; failed to give communities and interested groups appropriate notice of local public hearings; and failed to answer questions at public hearings.

While large schools like Columbus High School have served students facing difficult circumstances well, the small schools the chancellor has opened have not enrolled the special education and non-English-speaking students that need our support, our most vulnerable students.

The UFT and the NAACP are just a small piece of the far-reaching list of advocates and concerned community groups, including the Alliance for Quality Education, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and a group of state-elected officials, who all agree that city officials ignored not only the new governance law in its campaign to close 19 schools, but ignored the voice of New York City.

The revised school governance law clearly calls for community input and voice in decisions that affect our children's lives. It lays out a series of requirements – which were ignored by school officials.

Last year, the UFT worked together with the mayor and the chancellor in Albany to craft a renewal of mayoral control legislation that would enable the needs of the community to be heard in important Department of Education decisions. At that time, the mayor and the chancellor publicly embraced those changes. But now, when faced with implementation of school closings, the department did not follow their own guidelines.

Each and every one of us made a promise to New York City's schoolchildren, and they are depending on us now more than ever. We need to end the misguided DOE policy of abandoning struggling schools. It is imperative that we focus all our efforts and resources into helping our schools succeed, serving our neediest of students and giving every child the education they deserve.

Michael Mulgrew is UFT President and Hazel N. Dukes is NAACP New York State Conference President