On the fourth floor of the Bushwick Campus High School to 125 freshmen who lived almost exclusively in the surrounding neighborhood in Brooklyn.  At the time, the New York City Department of Education looked to Harbor School to help improve the community’s local graduation rate, which had hovered for too long at 24 percent.  Offering a maritime-themed academic program, despite its land-locked location, Harbor School infused the standard New York State Education Department Regents-based curriculum with high-interest, water-related topics and then brought those topics to life by exposing students to local water bodies, including New York Harbor, the Hudson River, the East River, and the Gowanus Canal.  By 2010, Harbor School had improved the local graduation rate by more than 200 percent.

 

In 2010, Harbor School moved to its new home on Governors Island and expanded its efforts to admit students from all five boroughs of New York City.  Today, Harbor School serves a diverse group of four hundred and thirty-five students, who come from neighborhoods across the city, both public and private middle schools, and whose life experiences and interests bring them to a high school focused on marine science and technology. All current students at Harbor School enroll in traditional New York State Regents-based academic courses and one of eight NYS certified Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs of study.  As they prepare for college and train for industry, students cultivate an ethic of environmental stewardship and learn about and work toward protecting, conserving, and restoring the environment.