7:30 am to 2:40 pm (Main Campus)

8:15 am-2:10 pm (Hope Academy)

Elvis Minga, Principal 

Michelle Rivera , Assistant Principal (Grade 9)

Jeremy Himelberger, Assistant Principal (Grade 10)

Jordan Wissinger, Assistant Principal (Grade 11 & 12)

Jennifer Rizzo, Assistant Principal (Hope Academy)

Hartford Public High School is believed to have grown from the classes Hartford founder Rev. Thomas Hooker gave to young men from his house on Prospect Street. In the will of Governor Edward Hopkins of March 7, 1657 funds were provided for a free school in the city. In 1839 the First School Society proposed forming a high school and on December 1, 1847 Hartford Public High School was dedicated by Henry Barnard and the Rev. Horace Bushnell. The school building represented the latest in school design with spacious classrooms. In 1869 a brick and brownstone school was built on Asylum Hill overlooking Bushnell Park on Hopkins Street, just west of the railroad station. Because of the number of students it was enlarged in 1877. The building was destroyed by a spectacular fire in January of 1882. Architect George Keller designed the replacement high school in 1883 and it was enlarged in 1897, and by 1914 had more than doubled in size. It had a telescope and observatory, state-of-the-art laboratories and James Goodwin Batterson’s collections of fossils and dinosaur tracks. In the 1960s the high school was demolished and Interstate I-84 replaced it. The new Hartford Public High School was built on Forest Street and opened in 1963.  It has been stated that the Hartford Public High School is the only high school in the country with the word “Public” in its name. 

R.J.  Luke Williams, former teacher at Hartford Public High School, has done an extraordinary job of preserving and sharing the rich legacy of Hartford Public High School by creating a museum within the Forest Street complex.