Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence

No public ELA, math, or science proficiency data was provided for this school, so I can't tell you whether students are outpacing the district averages of 45.9% ELA and 43.2% math proficiency or falling behind them. What the data does show is the academic shape of the school: a humanities focus, AP courses, a dual-language Spanish track with its own 25 seats, and ELL support woven into a college-prep environment. Average class size of 20.8 is roughly in line with the district average of 20.8, so students aren't getting unusually small classes — but the screened admissions do change who walks in the door.

Two very different pictures show up in the survey numbers. Parents rate the principal at 98% trust, parent-teacher trust at 95%, and overall satisfaction at 92% — an unusually warm family-school relationship. Teachers tell a more complicated story: teacher-to-teacher collegial trust is healthy at 86%, but teacher-principal trust sits at just 46%, the lowest dimension in the survey by a wide margin. Zero suspensions is genuinely rare for any high school, and combined with the screened admissions it suggests a calm, structured day-to-day. Attendance and chronic absenteeism data wasn't reported, so I can't speak to whether students are showing up consistently.

The student body is 80% Hispanic and 16% Black, with an economic need index of 93.1% — most families here are working-class or close to it. That mirrors the surrounding Ridgewood neighborhood, where the median household income is $83,559 and 12.6% of residents live in poverty, and where only about 1 in 5 households owns their home. The school's diversity index of 35% is moderate rather than mixed — concentrated in one direction — which is less a weakness than a reflection of the local community it draws from. The 25% IEP share is also worth noting; this is a screening school that hasn't screened those students out.

Ridgewood is a working-class-rooted neighborhood with a housing market that has clearly moved past its roots — typical home values run over $1 million even though just 20.4% of households actually own. Median household income in the low-$80Ks and a BA+ rate of 35.8% suggest a mix of long-time residents and newer arrivals who got priced out of brownstone Brooklyn. About 17% of households include children, a healthy share for a neighborhood that still skews more adult and renter-heavy than family-dense.

Three subway options serve the school: the L at Halsey Street is about a 6-minute walk, and the M at both Forest Avenue and Seneca Avenue is roughly 8 minutes away.