Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech and administratively designated High School 430, is an elite public

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

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 U ...

that specializes in

science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context o ...

. It is one of three original specialized high schools operated by the

New York City Department of Education The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (or the New York City Public Schools) is ...

, along with

Stuyvesant High School Stuyvesant High School (pronounced ), commonly referred to among its students as Stuy (pronounced ), is a State school, public university-preparatory school, college-preparatory, Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school ...

and the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Sp ...

. Brooklyn Tech is considered one of the country's most prestigious and selective high schools. Brooklyn Tech is ranked #6 in New York City and #46 overall in the United States for college readiness and graduation rates. Admission to Brooklyn Tech involves taking the

Specialized High Schools Admissions Test The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) is an examination administered to eighth and ninth grade students residing in New York City and used to determine admission to all but one of the city's nine Specialized High Schools. In 2008 ...

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 1,900 to 1,950 students are admitted each year. Brooklyn Tech counts top scientists, inventors, innovators,

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

company CEOs and founders, high-ranking diplomats, academic scholars, literary and media figures, professional athletes, National Medal recipients,

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ...

s, and

Olympic medalist This article includes lists of all Olympic medalists since 1896, organized by each Olympic sport or discipline, and also by Olympiad. Medalist with most medals by sport Summer Olympic sports Winter Olympic sports A. Including military patrol e ...

s among its alumni.

Overview

Admission

Admission to Brooklyn Tech is based exclusively on the

(SHSAT), open to all eighth-grade and first-time ninth-grade New York City students. The test has math (word problems and computation) and verbal (reading comprehension and grammar) sections. Of the approximately 30,000 students taking the SHSAT for September 2011 admission, with 23,085 students listing Brooklyn Tech as a choice on their application, about 1,951 offers were made (the most of any of the specialized high schools, partly due to BTHS's size).

Graduation requirements

There have long been "service credit" requirements, dating to at least the 1950s and likely earlier, for a student to receive a Brooklyn Tech diploma. Beginning with the class of 2010, each student must meet the following requirements by the end of their senior year to receive a BTHS diploma: I. A minimum of 50 hours of community service outside of the school or through specified club activities. II. A minimum of 32 service credits earned through participation in Tech clubs, teams, and/or participation in designated school related events. Service credits are earned as follows:
1. 8 service credits per term to all students in Legacy Clubs; Student Government (SGO); Student Productions; and/or PSAL Teams (including Cheerleading),
2. 6 service credits per term to all students working on office squads; participating in Student Leadership; who hold membership in a chapter of an honor society; and/or are in clubs that represent Brooklyn Tech in some significant activities,
3. 4 service credits per term to all students who participate in all other clubs not referred to above.
4. Service Credits numbering less than a maximum of 4 can be given to students who participate in unique, yet insignificant activities as determined by a member of faculty.

Reputation

Brooklyn Tech is one of the most elite, prestigious and selective high schools in the United States. Together with

and

, it is one of the three original Specialized High Schools of New York City, operated by the

, all three of which ''

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 n ...

'' cited in 2006 as among the country's best

magnet school In education in the United States, the U.S. education system, magnet schools are State school, public schools with Specialized school, specialized Course (education), courses or Curriculum, curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw stude ...

s (a category the school is often placed in, though its founding predates the concept of a "magnet school", whose intended purpose was not the same). Admission is by

competitive examination An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered ...

. As a public school, BTHS has no

tuition fee Tuition payments, usually known as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in Commonwealth English, are fees charged by education institutions for instruction or other services. Besides public spending (by governments and other public b ...

, but only students who reside in New York City are allowed to attend, as per the Hecht-Calandra Act. Brooklyn Tech ranked 2nd in New York State on the 2021 '' U.S. News & World Report'' "Best High Schools" list, making it the highest ranked Specialized High School. In 2008 ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' listed it among five public high schools that were not in the magazine's 13 "Public Elite" ranking, explaining, "''Newsweek''s 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". In the 2020 ''U.S. News'' ranking, Brooklyn Tech was in the top 8 high schools in New York State and in the top 50 in the nation. Brooklyn Tech is a founding member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology. Routinely, 99% of its graduates are accepted to four-year colleges with the 2020 graduating class being offered more than $150 million in scholarships and grants. In 2011, '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked Brooklyn Tech among the nation's 50 best high schools for mathematics and science. It was ranked #2 on ''Niche'''s "Standout High Schools in America" list.

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 Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, science, and

drafting Drafting or draughting may refer to: * Campdrafting, an Australian equestrian sport * Drafting (aerodynamics), slipstreaming * Drafting (writing), writing something that is likely to be amended * Technical drawing, the act and discipline of compo ...

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 Flatbush Avenue is a major avenue in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the ...

Extension, with 2,400 students. This location, in the shadow of the

Manhattan Bridge The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension. The main span is long, with the suspension cables ...

, 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 Fort Greene is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Flushing Avenue and the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the north, Flatbush Avenue Extension and Downtown Brooklyn to the wes ...

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 Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

Architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

Chemical A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wit ...

Civil Civil may refer to: *Civic virtue, or civility *Civil action, or lawsuit * Civil affairs *Civil and political rights *Civil disobedience *Civil engineering *Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism *Civilian, someone not a membe ...

Electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

(later including Electronics and Broadcast), Industrial Design,

Mechanical Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...

Structural A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

, and Arts and Sciences. A general

College A college ( Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

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 (including many student leaders) 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 WNYE-TV (channel 25) is a non-commercial independent television station in New York City. The station is operated by NYC Media, a division of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, and is sister to public radio station WNYE (91.5 FM). Th ...

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,

, 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

(SHSAT) and tested students in math and English. With its statewide recognition, the school had to become

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

. Previous to this, Brooklyn Tech was All Boys, and had a sister school,

Bay Ridge High School Bay Ridge High School was a school based in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Initially the school was co educational, but when New Utrecht High School was formed it became an all girls high school. It served as the sister school to Brooklyn Technical High ...

which was all girls. In 1973, Tech celebrated its 50th anniversary with a dinner-dance at the

Waldorf Astoria The Waldorf Astoria New York is a luxury hotel and condominium residence in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The structure, at 301 Park Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, is a 47-story Art Deco landmark designed by architects Schu ...

. To further commemorate the anniversary, a

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

was erected, with a

time capsule A time capsule is a historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a deliberate method of communication with future people, and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians. The preservation of holy relics date ...

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 following year, Tech received the Excellence in Education award from the

U.S. Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

. 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 The Decepticons are the main antagonists in the fictional continuities of the ''Transformers'' multimedia franchise. They are depicted as a faction of sentient robotic lifeforms led by Megatron, identified by a purple face-like insignia. Capa ...

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 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

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 such refurbishing 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 ''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 ...

'' 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 Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

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 Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...

, 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 A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

Continental Drift Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pla ...

'' by

Russell Banks Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...

be used for a class; and of

bureaucratic The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...

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 William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

teachers. Alcala had won Brooklyn Tech a $10,000

grant Grant or Grants may refer to: Places *Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom * Castle Grant United States *Grant, Alabama * Grant, Inyo County, ...

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 An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, communit ...

and gave her low performance rankings. Shortly after, Alcala left for

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

Murry Bergtraum High School The Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers is a public secondary school in New York City. It is located in Lower Manhattan, adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall. Bergtraum offers business-oriented courses to prepare students for ...

, 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

launched an investigation of McCaskill on February 2, 2006, concerning unpaid enrollment of

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...

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.

Randy Asher

On February 7, 2006, the Department of Education named Randy Asher, founding principal of the

High School for Math, Science and Engineering The High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College (often abbreviated to High School for Math, Science and Engineering, HSMSE, or HSMSE @ CCNY) is one of the twelve public specialized high schools in New York City, United States ...

(HSMSE), as interim acting principal. Asher had previously served as Brooklyn Tech's assistant principal in mathematics from 2000 to 2002 before leaving to become founding principal of HSMSE. During his time as principal, the total student enrollment increased from 4,200 to 5,700. In the beginning of January 2017, Asher abruptly left Tech to take on a new position as an NYC Education Department senior advisor to help reduce the

Absent Teacher Reserve Absent Teacher Reserve is a term referring to teachers who are no longer appointed to a specific school, but are reassigned to a school or number of schools within a school district or school system throughout the school year. It may also refer to a ...

. Throughout Asher's tenure, the school's reputation was sullied by several allegations of sexual harassment and assault of students by faculty members, resulting in the termination of Sean Shaynak (an aerospace engineering teacher hired by Asher) and the reassignment of English teacher and school newspaper advisor David Lo. Music teacher Marisa Cazanave abruptly resigned in the fall of 2016 when faced with charges of having an inappropriate relationship with a male student. The school was also rocked by allegations of racism against black students and Asher faced mounting student pressure on social media to fix the situation. Following Asher's departure, former assistant principal David Newman took on the new position as acting principal of the specialized high school. In February 2020, Newman was appointed principal.

Building and facilities

The school, built on its present site from 1930 to 1933 at a cost of $6 million, is 12 stories high, and covers over half a city block. Brooklyn Technical High School is directly across the street from Fort Greene Park. Facilities at BTHS include: *

Gym A gymnasium, also known as a gym, is an indoor location for athletics. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasium". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learning spaces in educational ...

nasia on the first and eighth floors, with a

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft with non-sloped ...

running track above the larger first floor gym and a weight room on the third floor boys locker room. The eighth floor gym had a

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thoug ...

alley lane and an adjacent wire-mesh enclosed rooftop sometimes used for handball,

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

and for

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...

practice. *25-yard

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...

in the basement *Wood, machine, sheet metal and other specialized shops. A program involves a shop where an actual house is built and framed by students. Most have been converted into normal classrooms or

computer lab A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This us ...

s, except for a few

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

shops, such as the Ike Heller Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Robotics Center. *A

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals ...

on the seventh floor, with a floor of

molding sand Molding sand, also known as foundry sand, is a sand that when moistened and compressed or oiled or heated tends to pack well and hold its shape. It is used in the process of sand casting for preparing the mold cavity. Green sand Green sand is an a ...

used for creating

sand casting Sand casting, also known as sand molded casting, is a metal casting process characterized by using sand as the mold material. The term "sand casting" can also refer to an object produced via the sand casting process. Sand castings are produced ...

molds and equipped with furnaces, kilns, ovens and ancillary equipment for metal smelting. Students made wooden patterns in pattern making, which were used to make sand molds which were cast in the foundry and machined to specification in the machine shops. It was closed in the late 1980s. *Materials testing lab, used during the basic materials science (Strength of Materials) class. Included industrial capacity Universal Testing Machine and brinell hardness tester and polishing and microscopic examination rooms. During the 1960s, students attended "inspection training shop" and were taught to use

x-ray X-rays (or rarely, ''X-radiation'') are a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. In many languages, it is referred to as Röntgen radiation, after the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered it in 1895 and named it ' ...

analysis to detect metal fatigue failures, use of vernier measuring instruments, micrometers, and go-no-go gauges. * Aeronautical lab, featuring a large

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

, During the 1960s, a

T-6 Texan The North American Aviation T-6 Texan is an American single-engined advanced trainer aircraft used to train pilots of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), United States Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force and other air forces ...

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

surplus aircraft in the building was used for student aeronautical mechanic instruction. *Radio

studio A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design, ...

and 18,000 watt transmitter licensed by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...

WNYE (FM) WNYE (91.5 MHz) is a non-commercial educational FM radio station licensed to New York City. The station is operated, along with WNYE-TV (channel 25), by NYC Media, a division of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. Studios are loca ...

. The studio has not been used since the 1980s. *3,100-seat

, with two balconies — 4th largest auditorium in New York City *Recital hall on the ninth floor *Drafting, both pencil and ink

technical drawing Technical drawing, drafting or drawing, is the act and Academic discipline, discipline of composing Plan (drawing), drawings that Visual communication, visually communicate how something functions or is constructed. Technical drawing is essent ...

and freehand drawing rooms *

Library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

with defunct

fireplaces A fireplace or hearth is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the design. ...

* Football field on Fulton and Clermont Streets. The Football Field, named in honor of Brooklyn Tech Alumnus Charles Wang, was opened in 2001, with the home opener played October 6, 2001, against

DeWitt Clinton High School , motto_translation = Without Work Nothing Is Accomplished , image = DeWitt Clinton High School front entrance IMG 7441 HLG.jpg , seal_image = File:Clinton News.JPG , seal_size = 124px , ...

. *Access to

Fort Greene Park Fort Greene Park is a city-owned and -operated park in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York City. The park was originally named after the fort formerly located there, Fort Putnam, which itself was named for Rufus Putnam, George Washington's ...

for outdoor track,

, etc. *Mock courtroom for use by the Law & Society major and the Mock Trial Team. *The 420-foot WNYE-FM tower atop the school is three times taller than the building. The entire structure combined is 597 feet (181.96 meters) tall. It was the tallest structure in Brooklyn, beating out

AVA DoBro AVA DoBro, also known as Avalon Willoughby West and by its address of 100 Willoughby, is a residential high-rise building in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. A large building, it has 826 units over 57 floors. As part of the development, a new ...

by only one foot, but beaten in 2017 with the completion of The Hub, which is 13 feet taller. *In 1934, the

Public Works of Art Project The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a New Deal program designed to employ artists that operated from 1933 to 1934. The program was headed by Edward Bruce, under the United States Treasury Department with funding from the Civil Works Admi ...

(PWAP), which later became the

Works Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...

(WPA), commissioned artist Maxwell B. Starr to paint a mural in the foyer depicting the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of man and science throughout history.

Transportation

The New York City Subway's Fulton Street () and Lafayette Avenue () stations are located nearby, as well as more BMT and IRT services at

DeKalb Avenue At Fort Greene Park DeKalb Avenue is a thoroughfare in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, with the majority of its length in Brooklyn. It runs from Woodward Avenue (Linden Hill Cemetery) in Ridgewood, Queens to Downtown Brookl ...

and

Atlantic Terminal Atlantic Terminal (formerly Flatbush Avenue) is the westernmost stop on the Long Island Rail Road's (LIRR) Atlantic Branch, located at Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. It is the primary terminal for th ...

, which also serves the Long Island Rail Road. Additionally,

New York City Bus MTA Regional Bus Operations (RBO) is the surface transit division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It was created in 2008 to consolidate all bus operations in New York City operated by the MTA. , MTA Regional Bus Operations ru ...

's and routes stop near Brooklyn Tech. Students residing a certain distance from the school are provided full-fare or half-fare student MetroCards for public transportation on their first day of school at BTHS, as well as the first day of each school term onward.

Academics

Brooklyn Tech uses a college-style system of majors, unusual for an American high school. Below is the list of majors at Brooklyn Tech. *

Aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

Architectural engineering Architectural engineers apply and theoretical knowledge to the engineering design of buildings and building systems. The goal is to engineer high performance buildings that are sustainable, economically viable and ensure the safety health. Archi ...

Biological sciences Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

Chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

Civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

*Media communications * Electrical engineering * Environmental science research * Finance * Industrial design * Law and society *LIU advanced health professions *LIU PharmD *

Applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemat ...

* Mechatronics and robotics *

Pharmaceutical sciences Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

* Social science research *

Software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ' ...

Students are placed into a major during the second semester of their sophomore year after ranking all the majors in order of preference. These majors include courses, typically Advanced Placement or Project Lead the Way (PLTW) courses, that concentrate in that specific area of interest given to students during their last two years at Tech. Each major has a different formula (PI index) used to rank students according to their ranking preference of the majors and their current averages from freshman and sophomore year. A student with a higher PI index for their second preference if they did not get into their first, will get priority over another student with a lower average on the same major preference.

Bret Stephens Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for ''The New York Times'' in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017. ...

, an opinion columnist, wrote in ''

'' that "The success of Brooklyn Tech only casts an unflattering light on every other corner of the public school bureaucracy."

Extracurricular activities

Brooklyn Tech fields 30 junior-varsity and varsity teams in the Public School Athletic League (PSAL). The school's historic team name has been the Engineers. The school colors are navy blue and white. The school's more than 100 organizations include the Brooklyn Tech Amateur Radio Club (club station call sign W2CXN),

Civil Air Patrol Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a congressionally chartered, federally supported non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (USAF). CAP is a volunteer organization with an aviation-minded mem ...

Brooklyn Tech Cadet Squadron,

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

debate Debate is a process that involves formal discourse on a particular topic, often including a moderator and audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for often opposing viewpoints. Debates have historically occurred in public meetings, ac ...

, football, wrestling, forensics (speech), hockey,

mock trial A mock trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consistin ...

, robotics, and

rowing Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically at ...

teams and clubs, and The Surve

the official school newspaper. Tech has a literary art journal, Horizons, for those who want to express themselves through art, poetry, photography, and prose. The

Model United Nations Model United Nations, also known as Model UN or MUN, is an educational simulation in which students can learn about diplomacy, international relations, and the United Nations. At a MUN conference, students work as the representative of a count ...

provides students with a venue for discussing foreign affairs and also hosts a conference each year called TechMUN. Other clubs cater to a wide range of topics such as

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

, the Stock Market, ''

Dance Dance Revolution (''DDR'') is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, ''Dance Dance Revolution'' is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance g ...

'',

ultimate Frisbee Ultimate, originally known as ultimate Frisbee, is a non-contact team sport played with a frisbee flung by hand. Ultimate was developed in 1968 by AJ Gator in Maplewood, New Jersey. Although ultimate resembles many traditional sports in its ath ...

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

quilting Quilting is the term given to the process of joining a minimum of three layers of fabric together either through stitching manually using a needle and thread, or mechanically with a sewing machine or specialised longarm quilting system. ...

fashion Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fash ...

, debate (which offers Public Forum, Congress and Policy),

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

and

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

. The

cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ent ...

squad is named the Enginettes. In 2012, Tech students created a

Junior State of America The Junior State of America (formerly the Junior Statesmen of America), abbreviated JSA, is an American non-partisan youth organization. The purpose of JSA is to help high school students acquire leadership skills and the knowledge necessary to ...

Chapter at their school. Brooklyn Tech has its own student union, to address issues on a student level. Tech has a variety of community service clubs, such as

Key Club Key Club International, also called Key Club, is an international service organization for high school students. As a student-led organization, Key Club's goal is to encourage leadership through serving others. Key Club International is the hig ...

, Red Cross Club, and BETA. Tech students put on a musical each spring. There are two step teams, Lady Dragons and Organized C.H.A.O.S. The school has several Coordinator of Student Activities (COSA).

Notable alumni

A list of notable alumni of Brooklyn Technical High School is listed below. Brooklyn Technical High School also has a unique Hall of Fame, which lists alumni who have contributed significantly to

STEM Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushr ...

. Such alumni are noted below. *

Gary Ackerman Gary Leonard Ackerman (born November 19, 1942) is an American retired politician and former U.S. Representative from New York, serving from 1983 to 2013. He is a member of the Democratic Party. On March 15, 2012, Ackerman announced that he woul ...

'60 –

United States Representative The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together the ...

, New York (1983–2013) *

Warren Adler Warren Adler (December 16, 1927 – April 15, 2019) was an American author, playwright and poet. His novel ''The War of the Roses'' was turned into a dark comedy starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. Adler was an essa ...

'45 – novelist * David Antin, '50 - poet, art critic, professor * Henry L. Bachman, President of

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

in 1987. Vice President of BAE Systems * Karol J. Bobko '54 –

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

astronaut (1999 Hall of Fame inductee) * George R. Caron '38 – Tail gunner aboard the

Enola Gay The ''Enola Gay'' () is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it be ...

John Catsimatidis John A. Catsimatidis (born September 7, 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and radio talk show host. He is the owner, president, chairman, and CEO of Gristedes Foods, a grocery chain in Manhattan, and the Red Apple Group, a real estate ...

'66 – Chairman and CEO,

Red Apple Group John A. Catsimatidis (born September 7, 1948) is an American billionaire businessman and radio talk show host. He is the owner, president, chairman, and CEO of Gristedes Foods, a grocery chain in Manhattan, and the Red Apple Group, a real estate ...

Frank A. Cipriani Frank A. Cipriani was the fifth president of State University of New York at Farmingdale, SUNY Farmingdale. He served as president from 1978 to 2000 during the school's shift in focus to higher education in biotechnology. Cipriani graduated from B ...

, Ph.D., '51 – President, SUNY at Farmingdale (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Harry Chapin Harold Forster Chapin (; December 7, 1942 – July 16, 1981) was an American singer-songwriter, philanthropist, and hunger activist best known for his folk rock and pop rock songs. He achieved worldwide success in the 1970s. Chapin, a Gramm ...

'60 – Entertainer, humanitarian (2000 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Tom Chapin Tom Chapin (born March 13, 1945) is an American musician, entertainer, singer-songwriter, and storyteller. Chapin is known for the song "Happy Birthday", released in 1989 in his ''Moonboat'' album. It takes its melody from "Love Unspoken", a son ...

'62 – Entertainer, humanitarian *

Lorenzo Charles Lorenzo Emile Charles (November 25, 1963 – June 27, 2011) was an American college and professional basketball player. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Charles played basketball for North Carolina State University and scored the game-winning ...

'81 – Professional basketball player * Cordell Cleare – New York State Senator *

Kim Coles Kim LaShaunda Coles (born January 11, 1962) is an American actress, comedian and game show host. Coles is known for her roles as a cast member on ''In Living Color'' for the first season (1990-1991) and as Synclaire James-Jones on television sitco ...

'80 – Actress * Diane Dixon '82 – U.S. Track and Field Olympic gold medalist (1984) * John Piña Craven '42 – Chief Scientist, US Navy Special Projects Office *

James E. Dalton James Edward Dalton (born October 17, 1930)Marquis Who's Who on the Web is a former general and former chief of staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Biography Dalton was born in New York City in 1930. He is a graduate of ...

'49 – former Chief of Staff,

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) is the military headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Allied Command Operations (ACO) that commands all NATO operations worldwide. ACO's and SHAPE's commander is t ...

; retired

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army S ...

general (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Tavonia Evans Aquarius Maximus formerly known as Tavonia Evans is an American author, businesswoman, cryptocurrency expert, and educator. She is the founder and creator of the cryptocurrency Guapcoin. Life Evans was raised in Amityville, and is a graduat ...

, African-American author, businesswoman, cryptocurrency expert, and educator *

Richard Fariña Richard George Fariña (Spanish IPA: ) (March 8, 1937 – April 30, 1966) was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. Early years and education Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of an Irish mother, T ...

'55 – Writer, folksinger *

Lou Ferrigno Louis Jude Ferrigno Sr. (; born November 9, 1951) is an American actor and retired professional bodybuilder. As a bodybuilder, Ferrigno won an IFBB Mr. America title and two consecutive IFBB Mr. Universe titles; and appeared in the documentar ...

'69 –

Bodybuilder Bodybuilding is the use of progressive resistance exercise to control and develop one's muscles (muscle building) by muscle hypertrophy for aesthetic purposes. It is distinct from similar activities such as powerlifting because it focuse ...

, actor * Sidney Gordin, artist, professor *

Meredith Gourdine Meredith Charles "Flash" Gourdine (September 26, 1929 – November 20, 1998) was an American athlete, engineer and physicist. His nickname, "Flash" Gourdine, is a reference to comic strip character Flash Gordon. Education Gourdine graduated f ...

, Ph.D., '48 – Electrogasdynamics pioneer, '52

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

silver medalist] (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Warren Foster Warren Foster (October 24, 1904 – December 13, 1971) was an American writer, cartoonist and composer for the animation division of Warner Brothers and later with Hanna-Barbera. Early life He was born in Brooklyn, New York to Marion B. Fos ...

'23 – Cartoon music composer * Geoff Fox '68 –

WTNH WTNH (channel 8) is a television station licensed to New Haven, Connecticut, United States, serving the Hartford–New Haven market as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WCTX (channel 59), ...

meteorologist * Bernard Friedland '48 – engineer, professor at

New Jersey Institute of Technology {{Infobox university , name = {{nowrap, New Jersey Institute of Technology , image = New Jersey IT seal.svg , image_upright = 0.9 , former_names = Newark College of Engineering (1930–1975)Ne ...

* Elmer L. Gaden c.'40 – "The father of biochemical engineering" *

Carl Gatto Carl J. Gatto (December 29, 1937April 10, 2012) was a Republican member of the Alaska House of Representatives, representing the 13th District since 2002. He served as Chair of the Military & Veterans' Affairs Special Committee, and was a memb ...

'55 –

Alaska House of Representatives The Alaska State House of Representatives is the lower house in the Alaska Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alaska. The House is composed of 40 members, each of whom represents a district of approximately 17,756 people pe ...

from 2003 to 2012 *

Gerry Goffin Gerald Goffin (February 11, 1939 – June 19, 2014) was an American lyricist. Collaborating initially with his first wife, Carole King, he co-wrote many international pop hits of the early and mid-1960s, including the US No.1 hits " Will You L ...

'57 –

Brill Building The Brill Building is an office building at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, just north of Times Square and further uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood. It was built in 1931 as ...

lyricist * Francis Grasso '67 – Early disco DJ *

David Groh David Lawrence Groh (May 21, 1939 – February 12, 2008)Noland, Clair"David Groh, 68; Husband on 'Rhoda'" ''Los Angeles Times''. 14 February 2008. was an American actor best known for his portrayal of Joe Gerard in the 1970s television series ''R ...

'58 – actor, television's ''

Rhoda ''Rhoda'' is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns starring Valerie Harper that originally aired on CBS for five seasons from September 9, 1974, to December 9, 1978. It was the first spin-off of ''The Mary Tyle ...

'' *

Gary Gruber Gary R. Gruber (November 19, 1940 - August 27, 2019) was an American theoretical physicist, educator, and author who wrote books and software programs for test preparation. His work focused on test-taking and critical thinking skills. His writings ...

, Ph.D., '58 – Author, physicist, testing expert *

Arthur Hauspurg Arthur Hauspurg (August 27, 1925 – February 19, 2003) was an American businessman who was the chairman of Consolidated Edison. Biography Hauspurg was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. He received his B.S. from ...

– former Chairman of

Consolidated Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 ...

* Isaac Heller (1926-2015, class of 1943), toy manufacturer who co-founded

Remco Remco Industries, Inc. was a toy company in the United States founded in the 1940s. It was best known for toys marketed and sold in the late 1950s and early 1960s, like the 'Johnny Reb Cannon', 'Mighty Matilda Atomic Aircraft Carrier', 'Remco Voi ...

(2013 Hall of Fame inductee) * Herbert L. Henkel '66 – former Chairman of

Ingersoll Rand Ingersoll Rand is an American multinational company that provides flow creation and industrial products. The company was formed in February 2020 through the spinoff of the industrial segment of Ingersoll-Randplc (now known as Trane Technologies ...

Corporation *

Tommy Holmes Thomas Francis Holmes (March 29, 1917 – April 14, 2008) was an American right and center fielder and manager in Major League Baseball who played nearly his entire career for the Boston Braves. He hit over .300 lifetime (.302) and every year f ...

'35 –

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...

player * Joseph J. Jacobs, Ph.D., '34 – Author, engineer, humanitarian (2003 Hall of Fame inductee) * Lamont Jones (born 1972) - basketball player * Marvin Kitman '47 – Author, ''

Newsday ''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and ...

'' television critic] (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) * Joseph J. Kohn, '50 – Mathematician (2000 Hall of Fame inductee) * Richard LaMotta '60 – Founder of Chipwich,

ice cream sandwich An ice cream sandwich is a frozen dessert consisting of ice cream between two biscuits, skins, wafers, or cookies. The ingredients are different around the world, with Ireland and Israel using wafers, and North America using chocolate cookies. ...

company *

Jerry Landauer Jerry G. Landauer (January 16, 1932 – February 24, 1981) was an American investigative journalist with ''The Wall Street Journal''. Biography Landauer was born in Stuttgart, Germany on January 16, 1932, and his family emigrated to the United ...

– investigative journalist with ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' *

Ivan Lee Ivan Lee (born Ivan James Lee, March 31, 1981 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American sabre fencer, referee and coach. Overview Ivan Lee was a member of the 2001 U.S. Junior World Sabre team, anchoring the team to its first men's world title at t ...

'99 – Internationally ranked

saber A sabre (French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as th ...

fencer *

Al Lerner Alfred Lerner (May 8, 1933 – October 23, 2002) was an American businessman. He was best known as the chair of the board of credit-card giant MBNA and the owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League. He was also a past pre ...

'51 – Businessman, ran

MBNA MBNA Corporation was a bank holding company and parent company of wholly owned subsidiary MBNA America Bank, N.A., headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, prior to being acquired by Bank of America in 2006. History The former Maryland National ...

and former owner of the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference ( ...

*MSgt.

Meyer S. Levin Meyer (Mike) Levin (June 5, 1916 - January 7, 1943) was a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress Bombardier (rank), bombardier, pilot, and war hero. Three days after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, he flew on a mission with pilot Colin Kelly agai ...

'34 – Decorated Army Air Force hero, World War II (1999 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Harvey Lichtenstein Harvey Lichtenstein (April 9, 1929 – February 11, 2017) was an American arts administrator. He is best known for his 32-year tenure (1967–99) as president and executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or BAM, as it became known und ...

'47 – Executive Director,

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

(1967–99) (1999 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Turk Lown Omar Joseph "Turk" Lown (May 30, 1924 – July 8, 2016) was an American professional baseball player. He was a right-handed pitcher over parts of 11 seasons (1951–54, 1956–62) with the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox. The ...

, Major League Baseball player *

Jack Maple Jack Maple (September 23, 1952 – August 4, 2001) was a New York City deputy police commissioner for crime control strategies. He created the CompStat methodology of crime fighting and law enforcement strategy. He coauthored the book ''The Cri ...

'70 – New York City Deputy Police Commissioner for Crime Control Strategies (1994-1996) and developer of

CompStat CompStat—or COMPSTAT, short for COMPuter STATistics, is a computerization and quantification program used by police departments. It was originally set up by the New York City Police Department in the 1990s. Variations of the program have since b ...

process; completed high school equivalency after dropping out *

Richard Matheson Richard Burton Matheson (February 20, 1926 – June 23, 2013) was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is best known as the author of '' I Am Legend'', a 1954 science fictio ...

'43 – Author, screenwriter *

Barry Mayo Barry Mayo is a former United States radio executive. In 1981 he helped launch WRKS in New York as the first station to play rap. The station's success led him to be promoted as the first black general manager of RKO General. In 2003 he succeeded ...

'70 – Radio executive *

Matthew F. McHugh Matthew Francis "Matt" McHugh (born December 6, 1938) is an American lawyer and former Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from New York, serving from 1975 to 1993. Biography Early life and education McHugh was born ...

'56 – U.S. Congressman (1975–93) * Londell McMillan '83 – Attorney * Conrad McRae '89 – Professional basketball player * Saverio "Sonny" Morea '50 – American aerospace engineer, former NASA employee, and flight instructor. He managed the development of the

Rocketdyne F-1 The F-1, commonly known as Rocketdyne F1, was a rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne. This engine uses a gas-generator cycle developed in the United States in the late 1950s and was used in the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and early 1970s. Fiv ...

and

Rocketdyne J-2 The J-2 is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine used on NASA's Saturn IB and Saturn V launch vehicles. Built in the U.S. by Rocketdyne, the J-2 burned cryogenic liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, with each engine produci ...

for the Apollo program

Saturn V Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with three stages, and powered with liquid fuel. It was flown from 1 ...

rocket, as well as the

Lunar Roving Vehicle The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) is a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program ( 15, 16, and 17) during 1971 and 1972. It is popularly called the Moon buggy, a play on the ...

. * Tony "Anthony" Moran '82 – DJ, remix/record producer *

Zellnor Myrie Zellnor Myrie (born 1986) is an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he has served in the New York State Senate since 2019, representing the 20th state senate district, which includes parts of Brooklyn. Early life and educati ...

'04 – New York State Senator * Richie Narvaez '82 – Author *

Mike Nieves Michael D. Nieves is the president and CEO of Hispanic Information Television Network (HITN), the largest non-commercial, Spanish language television network in the United States. Since taking the role in 2015, HITN has added over 10 million ne ...

– Deputy Chief of Staff to New York City Council Speakers

Christine Quinn Christine Callaghan Quinn (born July 25, 1966) is an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she formerly served as the Speaker of the New York City Council. The third person to hold this office, she was the first female and firs ...

Gifford Miller Alan Gifford Miller (born November 6, 1969) is the former Speaker of the New York City Council who represented the 5th district. Barred from seeking reelection due to term limits, the Democrat ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for ...

and Peter Vallone *

Ronnie Nunn Ronnie Nunn (born in Brooklyn, New York) is a former professional basketball referee in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for nineteen seasons and served for five years as the league's Director of Officials, until being reassigned in 2008 i ...

'68 –

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United ...

Director of Officials *

Arno Allan Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang th ...

, Ph.D '51 – 1978 Nobel laureate in physics (2000 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Frederik Pohl Frederik George Pohl Jr. (; November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite ...

'37 –

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

author, editor and fan; dropped out due to family exigencies during the Great Depression; received honorary diploma in 2009 *

Vernon Reid Vernon Alphonsus Reid (born 22 August 1958) is an English-born American guitarist and songwriter. Reid is the founder and primary songwriter of the rock band Living Colour, Reid was named No. 66 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 2003 list of the ...

'76 – Musician,

Living Colour Living Colour is an American rock band from New York City, formed in 1984. The band currently consists of guitarist Vernon Reid, lead vocalist Corey Glover, drummer Will Calhoun and bassist Doug Wimbish (who replaced Muzz Skillings in 1992 ...

* Sal Restivo, Ph.D., '58 – Author, researcher] (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) * Leonard Riggio '58 – Chairman, Barnes & Noble (1999 Hall of Fame inductee) * Werner Roth '66 – Professional soccer hall-of-famer *

Albert Ruddy Albert Stotland Ruddy (born March 28, 1930) is a Canadian-American film and television producer. He is known for producing ''The Godfather'' (1972) and ''Million Dollar Baby'' (2004), both of which won him the Academy Award for Best Picture, as w ...

'48 – Two-time

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment in ...

-winning producer *

Mark Sarvas Mark Sarvas (born September 26, 1964) is an American novelist, critic, and blogger living in Los Angeles. He is the host of the literary blog The Elegant Variation and author of the novel ''Harry, Revised'' (Bloomsbury, Spring 2008). ''Harry, Rev ...

'82 – Novelist, book critic *

Steven Sasson Steven J. Sasson (born July 4, 1950) is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the ''self-contained'' (portable) digital camera. Sasson is a 1972 (BS) and 1973 (MS) graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in electrical engineerin ...

'68 –

National Medal of Technology and Innovation The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...

-winner for work on

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image i ...

(2013 Hall of Fame inductee) *

John P. Schaefer John P. Schaefer is President Emeritus of the University of Arizona, where he had an active, 21-year career in teaching and research. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now NYU Polytechnic School ...

, President Emeritus of the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. ...

. *

Raymond Scott Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow; September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994) was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments. Though Scott never scored cartoon soundtracks, his music is ...

'27 – composer, pianist, engineer *

Irwin Shapiro Irwin Ira Shapiro is an American astrophysicist and Timken University Professor at Harvard University. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1982. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian from 1982 to 20 ...

'47 – astrophysicist *

Keeth Smart Keeth Thomas Smart
''The New York Times'', 27 May 2007. (born July 29, 1978) is a

'96 – Men's fencing silver medalist, 2008 Olympics *

Erinn Smart Erinn Smart (born January 12, 1980Erinn Smart
, USA Fencing. Accessed July 27, 2012.) is an American

'97 – Women's fencing silver medalist, 2008 Olympics * Chris Stanley – Radio producer for the Ron and Fez show *

George Wald George Wald (November 18, 1906 – April 12, 1997) was an American scientist who studied pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit. In 1970, Wald pr ...

, Ph.D., '23 – Biologist, '67

Nobel Nobel often refers to: *Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1901, from the bequest of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel Nobel may also refer to: Companies *AkzoNobel, the result of the merger between Akzo and Nobel Industries in 1994 *Branobel, or ...

Laureate] (1998 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Charles B. Wang Charles B. Wang (; August 19, 1944 – October 21, 2018) was a Chinese-American businessman and philanthropist, who was a co-founder and CEO of Computer Associates International, Inc. (later renamed CA Technologies). He was a minority owner (and ...

'62 – Co-founder,

Computer Associates International CA Technologies, formerly known as CA, Inc. and Computer Associates International, Inc., is an American multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is primarily known for its business-to-business (B2B) software with a product po ...

; minority owner,

New York Islanders The New York Islanders (colloquially known as the Isles) are a professional ice hockey team based in Elmont, New York. The Islanders compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference ( ...

hockey team (2000 Hall of Fame inductee) *

Anthony D. Weiner Anthony David Weiner (; born September 4, 1964) is an American former politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 1999 until his resignation in 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he consistently carried the district with at l ...

'81 – United States Representative from New York (1999–2011) *

Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilso ...

'50 – countercultural writer, futurist and ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'' associate editor *

Jumaane Williams Jumaane D. Williams ( ; born May 11, 1976) is an American activist and politician who has served as the New York City Public Advocate since 2019. He is a former member of the New York City Council from the 45th district, which includes East ...

'94 –

New York City Public Advocate The office of New York City Public Advocate (President of the City Council) is a citywide elected position in New York City, which is first in line to succeed the mayor. The office serves as a direct link between the electorate and city governmen ...

and former New York City Council member * Walter Yetnikoff '49 – attorney and record industry executive * Paul Yesawich '41 – professional basketball player * Marilyn Zayas '82 – Judge, Ohio's First District Court of Appeals *

Lee David Zlotoff Lee David Zlotoff (born July 10, 1954) is a producer, director and screenwriter best known as the creator of the TV series ''MacGyver''. He started as a screenwriter for ''Hill Street Blues'' in 1981. He then became a producer of ''Remington Stee ...

'70 – television writer

In popular culture

The Brooklyn Tech Cheerleading Squad appeared in the 1988

Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...

film ''

School Daze ''School Daze'' is a 1988 American musical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Laurence Fishburne (credited as Larry Fishburne), Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences ...

'',
/ref> and a video for the movie, entitled "

Da Butt "Da Butt" is a single released in 1988 from the original soundtrack to the film '' School Daze''. The song was written by Marcus Miller and performed by the D.C.-based go-go band E.U. The song reached number one on the Billboard's Hot Black ...

", was shot at Brooklyn Tech. Lee also used the first floor gymnasium as a shooting location for Jesus Shuttlesworth's, played by

Ray Allen Walter Ray Allen Jr. (born July 20, 1975) is an American former professional basketball player. He played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in ...

, Sportscenter preview in ''

He Got Game ''He Got Game'' is a 1998 American sports drama film written, produced and directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington and Ray Allen. The film revolves around Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington), father of the top-ranked basketball pro ...

''.. School interiors for the pilot episode of the 2013 series ''

The Tomorrow People ''The Tomorrow People'' is a British children's science fiction television series created by Roger Price. Produced by Thames Television for the ITV Network, the series first ran from 30 April 1973 to 19 February 1979. The theme music was c ...

'' were filmed in Brooklyn Tech. (Subsequent episodes were filmed in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. Th ...

rather than New York City.) Brooklyn Tech was also used to film the FOX series '' Gotham''.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* *
Photographer's tour of school, archived photos and article
*

External links

*
The Tech Internet Radio ProjectBrooklyn Tech Robotics Team 334: The TechKnightsBrooklyn Tech Alumni AssociationInsideSchools.org: H.S. 430 Brooklyn Technical High School
{{NYC Specialized High Schools 1922 establishments in New York City Educational institutions established in 1922 NCSSS schools New York City Department of Education Public high schools in Brooklyn Specialized high schools in New York City Fort Greene, Brooklyn