Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech and administratively designated High School 430, is a public specialized high school in New York City that specializes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is one of the three original specialized high schools operated by the New York City Department of Education, along with Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science. It is the largest high school in the nation.
Admission to Brooklyn Tech involves taking the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test and scoring the cutoff for Brooklyn Tech. Each November, about 30,000 eighth and ninth graders take the 3-hour test for admittance to eight of the nine specialized high schools. About 1,400 to 1,500 students are admitted each year.
Brooklyn Tech counts top scientists, inventors, innovators, Fortune 500 company CEOs and founders, high-ranking diplomats, academic scholars, literary and media figures, professional athletes, National Medal recipients, Nobel laureates, and Olympic medalists among its alumni.
Overview
Admission
Admission to Brooklyn Tech is based exclusively on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, open to all eighth-grade and first-time ninth-grade New York City students. The test has math and verbal sections.Graduation requirements
Per the New York State graduation requirements, students can earn a local diploma, a Regents diploma, or an advanced Regents diploma.To earn a Brooklyn Tech diploma, students must meet the following requirements in addition to the Advanced Regents Diploma requirements.
- Pass 2 semesters of Design & Drafting for Production
- Pass 2 semesters of AP Principles of Computer Science
- Pass Chemistry & Physics and their corresponding Regents exams
- Pass all courses required for their specific major
- A minimum of 50 hours of community service outside of the school or through specified club activities.
- Participation in at least one club, sport, or school-run activity.
Reputation
Brooklyn Tech ranked 7th in New York State on the 2024 U.S. News & World Report "Best High Schools" list. In 2008, Newsweek listed it among five public high schools that were not in the magazine's 13 "Public Elite" ranking, explaining, "Newsweeks Challenge Index is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students, and not magnet or charter schools that draw only the best students in their areas. These were excluded from the list of top high schools because their sky-high SAT and ACT scores indicate they have few or no average students".
History
In 1918, Dr. Albert L. Colston, chair of the Math Department at Manual Training High School, recommended establishing a technical high school for Brooklyn boys. His plan envisioned a heavy concentration of math, science, and drafting courses with parallel paths leading either to college or to a technical career in industry. By 1922, Dr. Colston's concept was approved by the Board of Education, and Brooklyn Technical High School opened in a converted warehouse at 49 Flatbush Avenue Extension, with 2,400 students. This location, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, is the reason the school seal bears that bridge's image, rather than the more obvious symbol for the borough, the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn Tech would occupy one more location before settling into its site at 29 Fort Greene Place, for which the groundbreaking was held in 1930.Early years
Atypical for American high schools, Brooklyn Tech uses a system of college-style majors. The curriculum consists of two years of general studies with a technical and engineering emphasis, followed by two years of a student-chosen major.The curriculum remained largely unchanged until the end of Dr. Colston's 20-year term as principal in 1942. Upon his retirement, Tech was led briefly by acting principal Ralph Breiling, who was succeeded by Principal Harold Taylor in 1944. Tech's modernization would come under Principal William Pabst, who assumed stewardship in 1946 after serving as chair of the Electrical Department. Pabst created new majors and refined older ones, allowing students to select science and engineering preparatory majors including Aeronautical, Architecture, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Industrial Design, Mechanical, Structural, and Arts and Sciences. A general College Preparatory curriculum was added later.
Principal Pabst retired in 1964. A railroad club was established by the late Vincent Gorman, a social studies teacher, and students attended fan trips, tours of rail repair facilities and participated in the restoration of steam engine #103 and a historic rail passenger car at the former Empire State Railroad Museum. In August 1965, a ten-year-old boy named Carl Johnson drowned in the swimming pool at Brooklyn Tech while swimming with his day-camp group. The next year, more than 30 graduating Seniors in the school complained that Tech's curriculum was old and outdated. Their primary complaint was that the curriculum was geared toward the small minority of students who were not planning on attending college. In 1967, the schools of New York City got to view television in the classrooms for the first time, thanks to the 420-foot WNYE-TV tower atop Brooklyn Tech.
For the school year beginning in the last half of 1970, young women began attending; all three NYC specialized and test-required science high schools were now coeducational.
Incorporation into specialized high school system and later years
In 1972, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, Stuyvesant High School, and High School for Performing Arts become incorporated by the New York State Legislature as specialized high schools of New York City. The act called for a uniform exam to be administered for admission to Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, and Stuyvesant. The exam would become known as the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test and tested students in Math and English. With its statewide recognition, the school had to become co-educational. Previous to this, Brooklyn Tech was All Boys, and had a sister school, Bay Ridge High School which was all girls.In 1973, Tech celebrated its 50th anniversary with a dinner-dance at the Waldorf Astoria. To further commemorate the anniversary, a monument was erected, with a time capsule beneath it, in the north courtyard. The monument has eight panels, each with a unique design representing each of Tech's eight majors at that point.
In 1983, Matt Mandery's appointment as principal made him the first Tech alumnus to hold that position. The same year, Tech received the Excellence in Education award from the U.S. Department of Education. The Alumni Association was formally created during this time, and coalitions were formed with the New York City Department of Transportation. Mandery oversaw the addition of a Bio-Medical major to the curriculum. John Tobin followed as principal in 1987, abolished the Materials Science department, and closed the seventh-floor foundry.
In the mid-1980s, a violent street gang known as the Decepticons were founded at Brooklyn Tech. As well, in 2000, the city issued a special report concerning the lack of notification to law enforcement during a string of robberies within the high school, including armed robbery with knives and stun guns.
Recent years
In March 1998, an alumni group led by Leonard Riggio, class of 1958, announced plans for a fund-raising campaign to raise $10 million to support their alma mater financially through facilities upgrades, the establishment of curriculum enhancements, faculty training, and a university-type endowment. The endowment fundraiser, the first of its kind for an American public school, received front-page attention in The New York Times and sparked a friendly competition amongst the specialized high schools, with both Bronx Science and Stuyvesant announcing their own $10 million campaigns within weeks of the Brooklyn Tech announcement. In November 2005, the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Association announced the completion of the fundraising phase of what they had termed the Campaign for Brooklyn Tech. In April 2008, the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation launched a second endowment campaign.Sixteen alumni died in the September 11 attacks in 2001. They are Dennis Cross '59, Ronald F. Orsini '60, Joel Miller '63, Sheldon R. Kanter '66, Stephen Johnson '75, Danny Libretti '76, Dominick E. Calia '79, Dipti Patel '81, Andre Fletcher '82, Courtney W. Walcott '82, Gerard Jean Baptiste '83, Wai C. Chung '84, Paul Innella '85, Michael McDonnell '85, Thomas Tong '87, and Paul Ortiz '98.
Since 2001, Brooklyn Tech has undergone refurbishing such as the renovation of the school's William L. Mack Library entrance, located on the fifth-floor center section. As well, two computer labs were added. The school also reinstated a class devoted to the study of Shakespeare, which students can elect to take in their senior year.
Lee McCaskill
Dr. Lee D. McCaskill, the appointed principal in 1992, served for 14 years, during which Tech saw the installation of more computer classrooms and the switch from the traditional mechanical drawing by hand to teaching the use of computer-aided design programs.In 2000, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the NYC School District wrote a report condemning Brooklyn Technical High School administrators for failing to report several armed robberies that took place in the bathrooms and stairwells.
In 2003, The New York Times published an investigative article that noted "longstanding tensions" between the faculty and Principal McCaskill, "spilled into the open in October, with news reports that several teachers accused him of repeatedly sending sexually explicit e-mail messages from his school computer to staff members." While the article praised him for his addition of music and sports programs, it mostly described the principal as autocratic, controlling the school "largely through fear and intimidation," and documented acts of personal vindictiveness toward teachers; severe censorship of the student newspaper and of assigned English texts, including the refusal to let the Pulitzer Prize-finalist novel Continental Drift by Russell Banks be used for a class; and of bureaucratic mismanagement. A follow-up column in 2004 found that there was increased teacher exodus, specifically documenting Principal McCaskill's campaign against Alice Alcala, who described as one of the city's leading Shakespeare teachers. Alcala had won Brooklyn Tech a $10,000 grant and brought in the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain for student workshops, but after Alcala had done so, McCaskill repeatedly denied her access to the auditorium and gave her low performance rankings. Shortly after, Alcala left for Manhattan's Murry Bergtraum High School, where she brought in $1,800 in grants for Shakespeare education; meanwhile, at Brooklyn Tech, there was no longer any course solely devoted to Shakespeare, according to the column.
In two newspaper articles in 2005, it was revealed that a $10,000 grant obtained by Dr. Sylvia Weinberger in 2001 to refurbish the obsolete radio studio remained unused. New classroom computers were covered in plastic rather than installed because the classrooms had yet to be wired for them.
The Office of Special Investigations of the New York City Department of Education launched an investigation of McCaskill on February 2, 2006, concerning unpaid enrollment of New Jersey resident McCaskill's daughter in a New York City public school, which is illegal for non-residents of the city. Dr. McCaskill produced a lease claiming that he rented an apartment in Brooklyn, but the copyright date on the lease was after the signatures were dated. On February 6, McCaskill announced his resignation from Brooklyn Tech and agreed to pay $19,441 in restitution.
A week later special commissioner Richard J. Condon rebuked the Department of Education for allowing McCaskill to retire, still collecting $125,282 in accrued vacation time, just days before the OSI completed its investigation. Condon also recommended that Cathy Furman McCaskill, the principal's wife, be dismissed from her position as a teacher at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn for her part in submitting fake leases and other fraudulent documents to indicate the family lived in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn. The next day, the Department of Education announced that it would fire her. After retiring from Brooklyn Tech, McCaskill became principal of Hillside High School in New Jersey, where in 2013, he resigned following accusations he spanked a female student.