Mott Hall Bronx High School

A beautiful building, a rich curriculum that includes French instruction, and the chance to travel overseas make Mott Hall High School an attractive place.

The school shares the Bathgate Educational Complex--a light and airy modern building opened in 2006--with Validus Preparatory Academy and the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science.

Mott Hall Bronx offers the International Baccalaureate diploma, a degree widely accepted at universities in more than 100 countries. More demanding than a standard Regents prep curriculum, the IB program requires students to show competency in a foreign language, write a 15-20 page research essay, make an oral presentation, and pass various subject exams. Only a handful of students are able to complete the IB program, according to the college counselor. Nonetheless, the IB curriculum offers wider opportunities than many schools have.  Although not all graduates are well-prepared for college, top students have been admitted to Columbia, Cornell, and SUNY campuses upstate.

In keeping with the international theme, some students have visited African and India, according to New Visions for Public Schools, the school support network that works with Mott Hall Bronx High School. Mott Hall Bronx was modeled on the original Mott Hall middle school in Harlem, but no longer has an affiliation with that school.

Special education: About one quarter of the students receive special education services. The school offers “flexible programming so students are programmed into the least restrictive environment for their core classes,” according to the Comprehensive Educational Plan.

Admissions: Educational option formula designed to serve a range of low, average and high achieving students. (Clara Hemphill, interviews, DOE statistics, December 2018)