Principal's Welcome

On behalf of the Energy Tech community, I am pleased to welcome you to our website, and I invite you to spend some time here getting to know the features of our program that make the Energy Tech experience so unique.

At Energy Tech, learning is cool. We regularly celebrate hard work and achievement at monthly Town Hall meetings, in small-group advisories, and through frequent communication on our online grading system. You can often find our students in the engineering lab or in classrooms refining projects well after the school day ends. Students work through vacations on robotics projects, and they look forward to periodic honor roll displays in our hallways. Over half of our students attend voluntary Saturday and summer enrichment courses. Energy Tech works hard to cultivate this culture of learning, as we believe that it is at the foundation of success in college, in career, and in life.

In classrooms, we emphasize collaboration and problem solving. On a typical visit to our classes, you might see students engaged in a lively debate about Macbeth, groups testing the solar ovens they designed and built (by cooking s’mores), teams constructing prototypes for Rube Goldberg machines, and students critiquing each others’ geometric proofs. You will find a healthy dose of competition—but also a lot of support and camaraderie—in our student body. 

We’re building the skills that will be needed to tackle tomorrow’s challenges. Through partnerships with local industry and higher education, the Energy Tech program is designed in alignment with critical academic, technical, and leadership skills needed for some of the fastest-growing STEM jobs here in New York City. Our teachers and staff work closely with college faculty and industry professionals from LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York, Con Edison, and National Grid. Our students take college classes while still in high school and participate in a robust career-readiness series, including field visits and internships. They will leave us with not only a high school diploma but also an associate degree and the experiences needed to go directly into competitive STEM jobs or four-year colleges. We believe they will take these skills, understandings, and qualifications, and will go on to solve complex problems and make our world a better place.

Energy Tech already has much to celebrate. We are quickly becoming recognized for our cutting-edge instructional program, our vibrant extra-curricular opportunities, and our warm and nurturing environment. In our fourth year of development, we received over 1,700 applications for our 108 open seats, and we are delighted that the word is spreading about our school and its innovative offerings. As not only the principal but also a resident of this community, I am proud to share our school’s successes with you. Please visit us again soon for more updates about what’s happening at Energy Tech! 

Hope Barter

Founding Principal 

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