The New York City Education Department announced on Monday that it planned to close three poorly performing schools at the end of the current school year. It is the first time Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has elected to shut down any noncharter public schools.....

.....But the move came as something of a surprise because unlike Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who closed more than 150 troubled schools during his tenure, Mr. de Blasio has emphasized his reluctance to shutter schools, preferring instead to shower them with resources and additional support in the hope of turning them around. He placed 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools in what he called the School Renewal Program, announced last year, which gave schools three years to improve, with the help of extra money for the school and increased support services for students and their families.....

.....In place of the dozens of schools it shuttered, most of them large, chronically troubled institutions, the Bloomberg administration opened more than 650 smaller schools across the city, believing that they could give more attention to struggling students. The nonprofit research group M.D.R.C. has found benefits to this approach; it says students who attended those small schools graduated and went to college at a higher rate than their peers.

But new and small did not necessarily equal successful; all three schools being closed by the de Blasio administration opened during Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers and a ferocious opponent of Mr. Bloomberg’s school closings, said that he and Ms. Fariña spoke over the weekend about the three schools. During that conversation, Ms. Fariña explained that they were to be closed because of their size, Mr. Mulgrew said.

“On this one, because of the size, we understood what they were doing,” Mr. Mulgrew said.

The closings must be approved by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy.

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