City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology

Part of the city's effort to rethink vocational education, City Polytechnic offers students the chance to earn a high school diploma and an associate's college degree in six years. Students may study civil engineering, construction management and architecture at New York City College of Technology, the CUNY school just down the street.

City Poly shares a building with Westinghouse High School and the middle school grades of PS 8, an elementary school in Brooklyn Heights. There is a campus-wide talent and fashion show, as well as shared sports teams. The schools share the cafeteria and gym. Students must pass through metal detectors.

We saw some hands-on projects on our visit. In an applied physics class, students discussed kinetic energy and acceleration after a trip to an amusement park where they rode a roller coaster. They made model "maglev" trains using the force of magnetism to move their cardboard train cars along a track. Engineering students took notes on traffic hazards on a street corner outside the school; they planned to give recommendations to the city's Vision Zero project to decrease pedestrian injuries and fatalities. Students interested in architecture take CAD (computer-aided drafting).

Founded in 2009 in the George Westinghouse High School building, City Poly was originally designed as a five-year program in which students would complete their high school requirements in three years, then take college courses. The accelerated program didn't work for everyone, especially for the many students who began 9th grade with poor academic skills. Staff decided to revamp the curriculum so students would have four years of high school and two years of college, similar to P-Tech, another Brooklyn career and technical education school. City Poly is 80 percent male.

There has been some turnover in leadership. Yusuf Muhammad, who became principal in 2013, left in 2016 and was replaced by Judie Hartmann. Hartmann left in February 2018, replaced by Lisa Ostom as interim acting principal.

SPECIAL EDUCATION: The school offers ICT team-teaching and self-contained classes.

ADMISSIONS: The school has no admissions requirements. (Clara Hemphill, May 2015; updated April 2018)