Ralph McKee Career and Technical High School is a cozy school of about 700 students that offers cutting-edge professional training as well as access to traditional trades, like automotive, construction, and cosmetology. Its trade programs are hands-on education in the truest sense, and many kids here seem to be thriving. Students can play in the school band or take apart an engine, collaborate on the school's prize-winning Robotics team or master the newest updo in the salon-style cosmetology shop.

More so than most city schools, McKee's population spans the gamut, from kids drifting along to motivated, hard-working students. It enrolls more than twice as many boys as girls, with girls significantly underrepresented in the more technical "majors," like drafting/pre-engineering and automotive.

While increasing emphasis on academic achievement and student progress, as measured by Regents scores, means tipping the daily balance away from "shop" to core subjects, McKee's students are graduating better-prepared for college and post-secondary education. Many of the engineering, information technology and visual arts program graduates go on to four-year colleges like CUNYs, SUNYs and even MIT. Graduates of the school's very strong construction program enter the trade union after graduation; others go on to work for the MTA in skilled, high-paying positions.

The school is making an effort to raise academic achievement by offering more academic classes on campus such as physics, which in past years was only offered via nearby Curtis High School. Students can take College Now courses, which permit high-schoolers to earn college credits in early-morning or afternoon classes taught by college instructors.

All students at McKee benefit from constant access to high-level new technologies, like the 3-D printer that made dimensional models out of spun plastic in the drafting studio and a state-of-the-art Mac labs. The robotics lab, headed by a full-time school mechanic, boasts both state-of-the art design technology and a full-fledged machine shop for fabricating the large-scale robots. Students brag about the weekend, evening, and early-morning hours they spend working together. (See their website at www.robowizards.com.) Not every student at McKee is as fully engaged, however. Attendance is lower than Principal Sharon Henry would like. Teachers say students on the college track taking honors classes have a significantly higher graduation rate than those in regular classes.

Most 9th graders start school well below grade level in English and math. To help them build basic skills many take double periods of literacy and math classes. Many classes seem fairly basic, with minimal writing assignments such as writing a 50-word journal entry or using books well below high-school reading level.

SI Tech hosts practice and games for the schools' joint varsity sports teams.

Special education: About a quarter of the students receive special education services. There are self-contained classes for students with special needs only, as well as CTT (Collaborative Team Teaching) which integrate special education and general education students in a class with two teachers. Special-needs students staff the popular McKee Cafe, a food service for the school staff.

Admissions: Several programs are screened and require students to have grades of at least 75 in their core subjects and score at least a Level 3 on their state ELA and math exams. Other programs admit students based on the educational option formula designed to ensure a mix of low, average and high achieving students. (Helen Zelon, March 2008, updated 2011)