August Martin High School

The strongest signals in this profile aren't about proficiency rates — they're about program density. AP courses, ELL support, and Spanish are all on offer, and the school's program richness score of 90 out of 100 is high for an enrollment of just 485. Two of the most selective CTE-style academies in southeast Queens live here: the Aerospace and Technology Academy fills just 58 of 309 seats (a 20% offer rate), and the Culinary Arts Academy fills 58 of 239 (25%). Students walk into a building built for career pipelines, even when that pipeline narrows at the admissions door.

Zero suspensions is a striking data point — well below the district average suspension rate of roughly 0.5% — and teachers rate their own instructional quality at 93%, above the district average of about 91%. Parents who responded to the survey report high satisfaction (89% — slightly below the district's 93%) and very high trust in teachers (91%) and the principal (88%). The big asterisk is response rate: only 17% of families and 42 teachers returned surveys, which is a thin slice of the community. The day-to-day feel also has a friction point worth naming — teacher trust in the principal sits at 64%, well below the 75% teacher collegial trust and far below the parent-side numbers, suggesting some staff-administration tension that families may not feel from the parent surveys.

August Martin's 485 students are 59% Black, 22% Hispanic, 12% Asian, and 2% White, with 25% of students having IEPs and an economic need index of 70.9. The surrounding Springfield Gardens–Rochdale Village area is a stable middle-income pocket where roughly 37% of households own their homes and about a fifth of households have kids under 18. The school's high economic need index outpaces the area's 11% poverty rate, suggesting it draws from a wider stretch of southeast Queens, not just the immediate blocks.

The school sits in the Springfield Gardens (North)–Rochdale Village area, a middle-income slice of southeast Queens where median household income hovers around $74,500, about a fifth of households have children, and roughly a quarter of adults hold a bachelor's degree. The neighborhood's 37% homeownership rate and median home value near $386,000 point to long-tenured families rather than transient rentals. This is a community that treats the school as a local institution, not a commuter destination.

There is no subway station within a 20-minute walk of the school, so families should plan on driving, getting dropped off, or relying on a yellow school bus — this is not a transit-commute school.