As part of an ongoing effort to turn around poor performing schools, the Department of Education is making changes this fall at 33 middle and high schools across the city, including two nearby: MS 80 on Mosholu Parkway, and MS 391, or the Angelo Patri School, further south on Webster Avenue.

The effort will qualify the city to receive millions of dollars in federal School Improvement Grants, doled out by the U.S. Department of Education, which require the DOE to institute one of four federally approved “intervention” methods to turn things around at each struggling school.

To the relief of teachers and parents, the city announced last month that none of the schools on its low-achieving list would be closed—one of the federal models on the table, and a favorite of the Bloomberg administration, which has shut down dozens of schools for poor performance over the last decade.

Instead, the DOE will institute two other federally approved tactics, “restart” and “transformation.”

MS 80 was selected for the restart model, in which the school is handed over to an independent community-based organization or education management group, charged with making changes to boost student performance.

MS 391 will undergo transformation, meaning the school must implement a new teacher evaluation system and will get extra funds to hire better skilled teachers—so-called “Turnaround” and “Master” teachers, who receive pay bonuses and work more hours over the course of the school year.

“This is all very good news,” said Eric Kollins, the technology director at MS 391. “The transformation plan was, in a sense, our best shot at keeping the culture we’ve been cultivating, while no one is getting fired.”

Staff at each of schools will remain intact, according to the city’s teachers union, United Federation of Teachers. In a press release, the union called the transformation and restart models the “least punitive” of the four possible interventions—schools could have been closed entirely or subject to “turnaround,” which requires 50 percent of teachers and administrators at a given school be replaced.

The DOE says that each school can receive up to $2.1 million in federal funds to facilitate improvements there, though exact amounts have yet to be determined. The hiring of new teachers will wrap up by the end of the month, a spokesman said.

Calls placed to staff at MS 80 were not returned by press time. But the nonprofit that’s been paired with the school as an educational partner by the DOE said they’d just began making assessments there over the last few weeks, as teacher contract negotiations between the DOE and the UFT tied things up for much of the summer.

“This is a new challenge, and a wonderful opportunity for us,” said Harris Bostic, vice president of the Harlem-based Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC), a large, multiservice corporation that works in housing, education, economic development, civic engagement and social services. The agency’s specialization in so many fields, Bostic said, makes ADC even more adept at turning schools around.

“Our transformation plan includes staff development, a rigorous academic curriculum, cultural sensitivity, parent engagement,” he said.  “We can wrap all of our services around what we do for the students.”

ADC already oversees three other schools in Manhattan. Last year, the organization was put in charge of Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School in west Harlem, where Bostic said they boosted the graduation rate from the mid-60s to 75 percent in the course of the school year.

Both MS 391 and MS 80 were ranked low-achieving by the city because of poor test scores, though some teachers say the numbers unfairly reflect a school’s performance.

“Personally, I don’t take too much stock in it,” said MS 391 special education teacher Bernhard Rauch. “Testing data can be problematic…but it’s largely political. They use it to open and close schools, but it does nothing for the kids.”