Gorton High School Earns Mayor’s Spotlight — and They’ve Earned Every Bit of It

There’s a school sitting on Shonnard Place in northwest Yonkers that’s been graduating classes since 1924. Over a hundred years of kids walking through those doors. Some of them went on to do big things. Some of them just needed a place that believed in them long enough for them to believe in themselves.

This past March, Gorton High School got some overdue recognition.

Mayor Mike Spano and Schools Superintendent Aníbal Soler, Jr. handed out the School Spotlight Award to Gorton. The third of four schools to receive the honor this academic year. Under Principal Jamie Morales, the school has been putting in work across two areas that actually matter: getting kids ready for the real world, and teaching them that their voice counts while they’re still in school.

On the career and college side, Gorton runs four state-approved Career and Technical Education pathways. We’re not talking about shop class and a handshake. Students are performing actual clinical procedures ,EKGs, phlebotomy ,in a working medical lab. They’re pitching businesses in Shark Tank-style presentations. They’re doing AI and biotech research with industry partners. And a chunk of them are walking across the graduation stage with over a year of college credit already in the bank.

That’s not a press release talking point. That’s a kid from Yonkers who starts college without starting from zero.

The other piece, civic engagement, is just as real. The Gorton Student Council isn’t just planning spirit week. These students are showing up at district forums, sitting down with the Board of Education, and working alongside the Yonkers Police and Fire Departments on community initiatives. The school’s My Brother’s Keeper and My Sister’s Keeper chapters serve more than 150 students and have produced two New York State MBK Fellows in the last two years alone.

Superintendent Soler pointed out that Gorton has been building toward this for over a century. That kind of institutional momentum doesn’t happen by accident, it happens because people inside that building keep showing up.

Yonkers has 80-plus parks, the largest film production complex in the Northeast, and a waterfront that’s finally coming back to life. But what really determines the future of this city is what’s happening inside those classrooms on Shonnard Place.

Gorton’s doing their part. The rest of the city should be paying attention.