Voyages Preparatory High School South Queens, enrollment 150
As of the 2014-15 school year, the school had an enrollment of 678 students and 42.6 classroom teachers, for a student–teacher ratio of 15.9:1. There were 468 students eligible for free lunch and 42 eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
History
Plans for the school, originally the Woodrow Wilson High School, existed as early as 1930, to relieve crowding in Jamaica High School. The school's building opened in 1942 as Woodrow WilsonVocational High School. Quotes from former President Woodrow Wilson still adorn the school building's facade. Initially it trained thousands of people to join defense-related industries during World War II, although it was planned in 1940, prior to the nation's entry into the war. Woodrow Wilson closed in 1971 when August Martin High School opened in the same building. The primary goal of the new school was to train African Americans to enter the aviation industry. The school's namesake, August Martin, was trained as a military pilot during World War II as one of the Tuskegee Airmen, and after the war became the first African American commercial airline pilot. Martin graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1938 and lived in New York City for much of his life. He died in 1968 when the plane he was piloting crashed during a humanitarian relief mission to the Biafra region of Nigeria. In 2012, neighborhood residents, elected officials, and students protested a plan to close August Martin High School, considered to be under-performing by the New York City Department of Education's leadership, and open new schools in the same building under different names. This practice had been followed previously at other schools around the city. The protesters stressed the importance of the name to the community. As of 2015, the school continues to operate as August Martin High School, and this name is still prominently engraved over the door, although the building also hosts two smaller high schools that use different names.
Notable alumni
Lloyd Banks,, rapper in the group G-Unit; dropped out in 1998
Najee,, jazz and smooth jazz saxophonist and flautist
Kelly Price, R&B and soul singer, formerly on the Def Soul label.
Freedom Williams. African American entertainer and rapper and co-founder of the seminal dance hip-hop group C+C Music Factory.
Russell Simmons,, African American entrepreneur, the co-founder, with Rick Rubin, of the pioneering hip-hop label Def Jam, and creator of the clothing fashion line Phat Farm. Graduated in 1975.
