ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON- In September 2024,Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) will open its newest campus in the Brownsville/East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. A campus of the Bard Early College network, this new high school early college was approved by the New York City Panel for Education Policy in a unanimous vote in February. With the recent opening of BHSEC Bronx in the fall of 2023 and its fall ’24 opening of BHSEC Brooklyn, Bard College has doubled the number of its New York City BHSECs in the past year. Like BHSEC’s other campuses, which now total nine campuses across six states, BHSEC Brooklyn is a public high school where students can earn up to an associate’s degree from Bard College, with 60 transferable college credits, alongside their New York State Regents diploma, entirely tuition free. This model enables high school students to pursue an intellectually inspiring course of study in the liberal arts and science while earning credits towards a two-year head start on higher education at no cost to students or families.
“We are excited to launch a new campus in Brooklyn as we expand Bard College’s partnership with the NYCDOE,” said Dumaine Williams, Vice President and Dean for Early Colleges at Bard. “The new campus will allow the core components of the Bard Early College model, including providing students with rigorous college level coursework, deep immersion in the liberal arts and sciences and close contact with faculty who are active scholars and practitioners in their fields, to be accessible to even more students and families in New York City.”
“Our family was thrilled to learn that Bard High School Early College is establishing a Brooklyn campus,” said prospective BHSEC Brooklyn parent Meghan LeBorious. “We are huge fans of the model and I think that the school would be a great fit for our son, who is very excited to apply.”
BHSEC Brooklyn represents a significant expansion of Bard’s work and impact in New York City, expanding its reach from two locations to four locations across the city’s boroughs within just two years. Through the partnership and leadership of New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) Chancellor David Banks, BHSEC Brooklyn has established a formal agreement with NYCDOE to prioritize enrollment for students from some of Brooklyn’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods including Brownsville, Ocean Hill, East New York, East Flatbush, Canarsie, New Lots, Bushwick, and others. Four out of every five seats at the Brooklyn campus will be dedicated to students living in these neighborhoods. Similarly, BHSEC Bronx prioritizes admission to South Bronx residents, and BHSEC Manhattan and Queens reserve a majority of seats for students who qualify for free/reduced price lunch.
The Brooklyn campus will ultimately serve up to 500 students, prioritizing enrollment for local Ocean Hill/Brownsville-area residents. In the 2024–2025 school year, the location for BHSEC Brooklyn is 301 Vermont Street, making the school immediately accessible to young people in Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York, and other Brooklyn neighborhoods. For its first year, BHSEC Brooklyn will enroll 125 students entering 9th grade and 25 students entering 11th grade. The admission application for rising 9th or 11th graders opened on March 18 and is available on MySchools. The deadline to upload the Bard assessment is April 19.
The new BHSEC Brooklyn builds on more than 20 years of successful partnership between Bard College and the City of New York. At the request of city leaders, in September 2001 Bard launched its high school early college network by opening the first Bard High School Early College. Since then, the success of the BHSEC Manhattan students, combined with local community demand for outstanding public education options, has led Bard to open additional early college campuses in the Bronx, Queens, Newark, Cleveland, New Orleans, the Hudson Valley, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. The College has awarded more than 4,000 AA degrees to BHSEC students across the Bard Early College network, where over 3,000 students are currently enrolled. More than 95 percent of BHSEC students, the majority of whom are first-generation college students and Pell eligible, graduate from high school with at least one year of tuition-free, transferable college credit from Bard.
