Kevin Kearns, an English teacher in his fourth year at the Bronx’s Herbert S. Lehman High School, expects the Department of Education’s decision-making body, the Panel for Education Policy, to vote in favor of closing his school tonight at a meeting in Brooklyn. Still, he’s making the trek out to the meeting anyway to testify in hopes that other schools won’t suffer the same fate in years to come.

“I’m going because I feel it’s important to put on record what the school means to us,” Kearns said from his cell phone while riding on the train.

But he’s also going, he said, because closing schools and re-opening new ones is becoming more and more prevalent and it’s being done without any regard for or  input from the school community. “A greater number of schools are closed each year,” he said. “It’s an unfair process and it’s not fair to the students, parents or teachers, who were 100 percent against this happening.”

Lehman is one of 10 Bronx schools designated by the DOE for closure and restructuring under the “turnaround” program, a federal model for school improvement that is untested in New York City. Early this year, after failing to reach an agreement with the teachers union over evaluations, the DOE proposed putting 33 city schools, all of which were deemed low-performing, into the turnaround program, which would allow the schools to continue receiving an extra $900,000 per year in state funding. (The funding was suspended when the DOE and the teachers union couldn’t reach an agreement by the beginning of the calendar year.

Since the initial proposals, the DOE has taken nine schools off the list for closure under the turnaround program, including two this morning. All of the Bronx schools on the list remain slated for turnaround.

Kearns said the Lehman community has vigorously fought against closure, staging rallies, coming out in force to testify at the DOE hearing about the proposal. (Kearns said more than 500 people showed up to oppose the turnaround program at the hearing. That stands in stark contrast to MS 80, another Bronx school on the chopping block. Only about 40 people showed up to the MS 80 hearing. Cecilia Donovan, the president of MS 80’s parents association, said she wasn’t planning on attending the meeting tonight.)

Although the DOE has said it removed schools from the list after re-examining them and saying they showed signs of being on the right track, Kearns think its more political than that, citing the fact that Council Speaker Christine Quinn testified at one of the schools taken off the list.

But the Bronx, it appears, is short on political clout.

The PEP meeting is tonight at 6 p.m., Prospect Heights Campus, 883 Classon Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11225.

These are the Bronx schools slated for turnaround:

Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical High School
Herbert H. Lehman High School
Banana Kelly High School
J.H.S. 22 Jordan L. Mott
I.S. 339
Bronx High School of Business
J.H.S. 80 Mosholu Parkway
M.S. 391 Angelo Patri Middle School
Fordham Leadership Academy
J.H.S. 142 John Philip Sousa