[4] El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice was established as a partnership between the El Puente, a Latino youth development group, and the New York City Board of Education (now the New York City Department of Education) in 1993 with money provided by New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit sponsor of alternative schools.

It was created to teach social justice and human rights to high school students, training them to become community activists in Williamsburg's predominantly Hispanic South Side.

[8] The school was originally housed at the South Fourth Street community center until City Department of Education officials ordered it to leave in 2006.

They feared that students in the Williamsburg area, known for being the city's teen-age gang capital at that time, needed more traditional academic skills for them to succeed.

[7] In 1998, Heather Mac Donald of the City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute think tank, criticized the school's culture and specifically its hip-hop class.