Far Rockaway High School


Far Rockaway High School was a public high school in New York City, at 821 Bay 25th Street in Far Rockaway in the borough of Queens. It operated from 1897 to 2011. Its alumni include three Nobel Prize laureates and convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff.
The school was closed as part of a plan to stop students' average grades from declining. It stopped accepting students in 2008 and closed for good on June 27, 2011.
Its longest-serving principal was Sanford J. Ellsworth, who served for more than 40 years; its last one was Denise J. Hallett.
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History

The school opened in 1897 with 19 students. The first graduating class of three students received their diplomas in ceremonies held on June 21, 1899.
Until the 1919-1920 school year, Far Rockaway High School was housed within P.S. 39. In September 1921, the school superintendents decided that the school, and its 25 classes of students, would become an independent entity managed by its own principal.
A contract to construct a new building for the high school with room for 4,500 students was awarded in August 1927 to the firm of Psaty & Fuhrman, which submitted the lowest bid of $1,459,971 to the New York City Board of Education. The firm had won an earlier bid, but withdrew its offer after determining that it had underestimated its costs. The firm that had come in second in the original bidding, came in second in the rebid, and unsuccessfully sued to have its original bid accepted after Psaty & Furman withdrew its original bid. The school was nearing completion by January 1929, with costs having risen to $2.5 million, 67% over the original bid of $1.5 million. The school would be one of the largest in the nation, ready to serve 2,500 students on a campus covering a city block, with a three-story auditorium, two gymnasiums, a swimming pool and ample classroom and athletic space.
By the 2006-07 school year, the school had 945 students and 72.8 teachers, yielding a student-teacher ratio of 13.0.
In December 2007, the school announced that it would cease accepting new students for ninth grade and existing students would be allowed to graduate, after which the school would end its independent existence. The Department of Education's decision cited declining marks under its school-monitoring system as the justification behind the planned closure. The school would stop accepting students as of the 2008-09 school year and would be phased out in its entirety over a four-year period. Students in the area now attend A.M.T Frederick Douglass Academy, a high school; Q.I.R.T, a high school and Kappa VI, a middle school.

Notable alumni