Morgan Gardner Bulkeley High School (known as Bulkeley High School) is a public

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

on the south side of

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

. It was founded in 1926 and is part of the Hartford Public Schools district. The school has an academic focus on teacher preparation and

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, as well as a

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track. The school also has language classes in Arabic and Spanish.

Student body

Bulkeley serves students in grades 9-12, with 616 students enrolled in the 2021-22 school year. Due to ongoing building renovations, students currently attend school at other locations (as of the 2021-22 school year). Many Bulkeley students speak languages other than English, with about 36% classified as

English Language Learners English-language learner (often abbreviated as ELL) is a term used in some English-speaking countries such as the United States and Canada to describe a person who is learning the English language and has a native language that is not English. Some ...

(compared to 9% statewide). About three quarters of students identify as

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, one in five identify as Black or African American, and other groups are represented in smaller numbers. Students at the school experience a high rate of poverty, as measured by the proportion who qualify for the

National School Lunch Program The National School Lunch Act (79 P.L. 396, 60 Stat. 230) is a 1946 United States federal law that created the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to provide low-cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to school ...

(88%, as compared to 41% of children enrolled in public schools statewide). In the graduating class of 2022, seniors were accepted to colleges in Connecticut such as

Capital Community College Capital Community College is a public community college in Hartford, Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to ...

; Manchester Community College; the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

;

Eastern Eastern or Easterns may refer to: Transportation Airlines *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai * Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 192 ...

, Central, Southern and

Western Connecticut State University Western Connecticut State University (WCSU and WestConn) is a public university in Danbury, Connecticut. It was founded in 1903 as a teacher's college and is part of the Connecticut State University System. WCSU consists of four schools: the A ...

;

Quinnipiac University Quinnipiac University ( ) is a private university in Hamden, Connecticut, United States. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. It also hosts the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. History What became ...

; as well as colleges in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and further afield.

History

After World War I, Hartford's population grew rapidly, from just under 100,000 in 1910 to 163,000 in 1930. By the mid-1920s,

Hartford Public High School Hartford Public High School, in Hartford, Connecticut, was founded in 1638. It is the second-oldest public secondary school in the United States, after the Boston Latin School. It is part of the Hartford Public Schools district. Notable alumni ...

could no longer serve all the city's secondary school students. The Hartford city government decided to build two new schools: Weaver High School for the north end, and Bulkeley High School for the south end. Bulkeley's original building was designed by the same architects as Weaver High School, Frank Irving Cooper and Edward T. Wiley. Bulkeley opened in 1926 and was named after businessman and politician Morgan Gardner Bulkeley, who was Mayor of Hartford, a

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for the State of Connecticut, the 54th

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, the first president of the National Baseball League, and for over forty years the president of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. When the school opened it had 949 students and 61 teachers; its first graduating class in 1927 had 115 students. Students attended school in the original building until 1974, when the high school moved two blocks to its current site at 300 Wethersfield Avenue. The 1926 structure is now home to the Michael D. Fox Elementary School. At the end of the 1930s Bulkeley was one of three public high schools in Hartford, along with

and Thomas Snell Weaver High School. Its enrollment of 1,743 represented about 28% of all high school students in Hartford (excluding

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). Principal Gayle Allen-Greene served as head of the school for 20 years, retiring in 2017. The current principal is Brooke Lafreniere, replacing Digna Marte.

Renovation and finance investigation

In 2018 the school building was slated for major renovations, estimated at $150 million, including plans to centralize the Hartford school district's food service at Bulkeley. During renovations, 9th and 10th graders attend school at 585 Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford (South Campus), while 11th and 12th graders attend school at 395 Lyme Street (North Campus). Renovations at Bulkeley High School are ongoing. As of June 2022, federal prosecutors are investigating corruption and mismanagement of the renovation finances. The case originally focused on decisions by Konstantinos Diamantis, formerly director of school construction financing. Connecticut Governor

Ned Lamont Edward Miner Lamont Jr. ( ; born January 3, 1954) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2019 as the 89th governor of Connecticut. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as a Greenwich, Con ...

fired Diamantis in October 2021 when suspicions arose about corrupt spending. During the investigations the case expanded and federal prosecutors are now investigating financial mismanagement of over $1 billion in state funds.

References

{{Capitol Region Athletic League High schools in Connecticut 1926 establishments in Connecticut Educational institutions established in 1926 Education in Hartford, Connecticut Public high schools in Connecticut