The Brooklyn School for Social Justice

The school offers AP courses and a humanities-centered program, with a small class size of about 21 students that's right at the district average for District 32. About a quarter of students have IEPs, and the school runs ELL support and a Spanish language pathway — both meaningful for a student body where roughly 80% identify as Hispanic and the economic need index sits at 92.8. While the data provided doesn't include specific proficiency rates to compare against the district's 45.9% ELA and 43.2% math averages, the program mix — AP courses, humanities, world languages, and an associated-credits option — suggests a college-prep orientation rather than a test-score factory.

Day-to-day culture is unusually well-aligned between families and staff. Parents report 98% trust in teachers and 97% trust in the principal — sky-high numbers — and 96% overall satisfaction, compared to the district average of 93%. Teachers rate instructional quality at 88%, above the district's 86% average. The wrinkle is the 62% teacher-principal trust score: teachers get along with each other (82% collegial trust) and feel good about their own teaching, but a meaningful share are not aligned with leadership on key decisions. And the discipline picture is striking — zero suspensions out of 304 students, which is dramatically better than the district average of about 1.2%. Worth flagging that the teacher survey had only 21 responses, so the teacher numbers carry real statistical uncertainty.

Eighty percent Hispanic, 15% Black, and a small mix of other groups — the student body closely mirrors the surrounding Bushwick neighborhood, which is predominantly Latino and working-class. With an economic need index of 92.8 (meaning more than nine in ten students are considered economically disadvantaged), most families here are navigating school systems, college applications, and English-language paperwork without a financial cushion. The PTA level and survey response rate of 71% — high for a high school — suggest families are engaged despite those pressures.

Bushwick is a working-class, renter-majority Brooklyn neighborhood where about 24% of residents live in poverty and the median household income is around $67,000. Only about 12% of households have children at home, and just 20% own their homes — though the median home value is nearly $950,000, which tells you a lot about who could buy here versus who already does. Roughly a third of adults have a bachelor's degree. The school's population looks a lot like the families in the immediate area: predominantly Latino, working-class, and multilingual.

Families have it easy on transit. The Myrtle-Wyckoff Avs station is about a 5-minute walk and serves both the L and M lines, which connect directly to Manhattan and across Brooklyn. Seneca Av on the M is also reachable in about 10 minutes for families coming from the north.