The school's program is designed to provide additional academic support for students from low-income backgrounds to better prepare them for post-secondary education.

[1] The site on which the DSBN Academy is built was originally part of a 100-acre land grant that was conveyed to John Gould by Letters Patent from the Crown in 1806.

Among the names of early settlers of this area are found, as recorded by the Registrar of Deeds, those of: Merritt, Woodruff, Rykert, Macdonald, Mettleberger, Bullivant, Adams and Brown.

In 1963, the Board of Education for the City of St. Catharines took steps towards building a local school in the area originally designated as West Park.

The city made available to the Board about seven acres of the unopened Homeland Plan subdivision, and jointly the Board and the city acquired another acre from the rear of the lots on Louth Street, For the building project the firm of Macbeth, Williams, Woodruff and Hadaway was chosen as architects and the general contract was awarded to Newman Brothers Company Limited.

The organization's founder and protagonist of the semi-biographical novel A Long Walk to Water, Salva Dut, visited the school personally to congratulate the students.

[11] On October 20, 2022, Njacko Backo went to the academy for a massive presentation in front of many people, about Cameroon and instruments that he plays.