Far Rockaway High School was a public high school in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, at 821 Bay 25th Street in

Far Rockaway Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the eastern part of the Rockaway peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood extends from Beach 32nd Street east to the Nassau County line ...

in the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle A ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. It operated from 1897 to 2011. Its alumni include three

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

laureates and convicted fraudster

Bernard Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ ...

. 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.

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 (on a

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often used to measure a ...

basis), yielding a

student-teacher ratio A student teacher or prac teacher (''practice teacher'') is a college, university or graduate student who is teaching under the supervision of a certified teacher in order to qualify for a degree in education. The term is also often used interch ...

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.Brosh, Brendan
"Far Rockaway High to close its doors"
'' New York Daily News'', December 7, 2007. Accessed June 11, 2013. "The school's alums include billionaire financier Carl Icahn and Nobel Prize winners Richard Feynman, Baruch Blumberg and Burton Richter." 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.Staff
"Metro Briefing , New York; Two More Schools To Close For Bad Performance"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', December 6, 2007. Accessed November 19, 2020. Students in the area now attend A.M.T (school of medical technology, middle school & high school.) Frederick Douglass Academy, a high school; Q.I.R.T (Queens High School for Information, Research and Technology), a high school and Kappa VI, a middle school.

Notable alumni

* Richard Bey (born 1951), radio and television talk show host. *

Baruch Samuel Blumberg Baruch Samuel Blumberg (July 28, 1925 April 5, 2011), known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepa ...

(1925–2011, class of 1942), winner of the 1976

Nobel Prize in Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...

. *

Joyce Brothers Joyce Diane Brothers (October 20, 1927 – May 13, 2013) was an American psychologist, television personality, advice columnist, and writer. She first became famous in 1955 for winning the top prize on the American game show '' The $64,000 Ques ...

(1927–2013, class of 1943), psychologist and advice columnist. * Bonnie Bruckheimer (born 1944, class of 1962), film and television producer. *

William F. Brunner William Frank Brunner (September 15, 1887 – April 23, 1965) was an American businessman and politician who four terms served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York from 1929 to 1935. Early life Born in Woodhaven, Que ...

(1887–1965), Congressman. * Richard Cohen (born 1941, class of 1958), columnist for ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

''. Cohen, Richard
"Goodbye, Bernie"
''

'', July 1, 2009. Accessed October 8, 2009. "I was in the Class of 1958, two years behind Bernie, but in the same class as his wife, Ruth." *

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...

(1918–1988), winner of the

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

in 1965 for his work on

quantum electrodynamics In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and spec ...

. *

Marcus Gaither Marcus Gaither (April 26, 1961 – July 16, 2020) was an American-French professional basketball player, who played the guard position. In 1989–90 Gaither led the Israel Basketball Premier League in scoring. He then played in France for 11 year ...

(1961–2020), professional basketball player in France and Israel, who played the guard position and led the Israel Basketball Premier League in scoring in 1989–90. *

Carl Icahn Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American financier. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach. Icahn takes la ...

(born 1936), financier and billionaire. * Herbert S. Klein (born 1936), historian. * Alan M. Kriegsman (1928-2012, class of 1945), winner of the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for his work at ''

'', the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for reporting as a dance critic. *

Nancy Lieberman Nancy Elizabeth Lieberman (born July 1, 1958), nicknamed "Lady Magic", is an American former professional basketball player and coach in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) who is currently a broadcaster for the Oklahoma City Thun ...

(born 1958), basketball player. *

(1938-2021, class of 1956), fraudster and former stockbroker, investment advisor and financier who is the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme considered the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, estimated to be $64.8 billion. *

Ruth Madoff Ruth Madoff ( ; Alpern; born May 18, 1941) is the widow of Bernie Madoff, the convicted American financial fraudster who served a prison sentence for a criminal financial scheme until his death in April 2021. After her husband's arrest for his ...

(born 1941, class of 1958), wife of Ponzi scheme swindler

. * Kenneth Alan Ribet (born 1948), mathematician. * Daniel L. Feldman (born 1949), author and politician *

Burton Richter Burton Richter (March 22, 1931 – July 18, 2018) was an American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) team led by Sa ...

(born 1931), winner of the 1976

. * Alan Schriesheim (born 1930), former director and CEO of Argonne National Laboratory. * MC Serch (born 1967 as Michael Berrin), hip hop MC and former member of

3rd Bass 3rd Bass was an American hip hop group that was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Formed by MC Serch, Pete Nice, and DJ Richie Rich, the group was notable for being one of the first successful interracial hip hop acts. Along with Beas ...

. * Mel Utley (born 1953), basketball player * Amirah Vann (born 1980), actress * John Warren (born 1947), former player for the New York Knicks.Velez, Elio
"Nash Leads Woodmere To Victory at Crotty Classic"
, ''

The Wave (newspaper) ''The Wave'' is the longest-lived and most widely circulated newspaper in the Rockaway Peninsula, New York City Borough of Queens. The weekly newspaper, currently under Editor In Chief Mark C. Healey, is well known to Rockaway residents for cover ...

'', February 3, 2006. Accessed June 22, 2007. "Far Rockaway High School alumni Mel Utley and John Warren, who was a member of the 1973 Knicks’ NBA championship team and recently Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson and Ron Artest are just a few of the names to play in the Big East court."

References

External links

* * {{authority control 1897 establishments in New York City 2011 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct high schools in Queens, New York Educational institutions disestablished in 2011 Educational institutions established in 1897 Rockaway, Queens Public high schools in Queens, New York