By Madina Toure
The Francis Lewis High School Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps in Fresh Meadows is the first and only school in its brigade to receive a U.S. Defense Department honor with distinction award with a perfect score for the 2014-15 academic year.
The award, which is granted every year by the secretary of defense, is based on the unit’s student performance, community service and a formal inspection. The unit is scored on a scale of 1 to 1,000. The formal inspection is worth up to 600 points, while the unit report is worth up to 400 points.
Francis Lewis is one of 40 JROTC units to earn this award in the second ROTC Brigade, which includes 271 JROTC programs from Maine to Pennsylvania. But Francis Lewis is the only program to receive a perfect score of 1,000.
“What makes this year a little different is that the unit achieved a perfect score of 1,000 points,” said Colonel Albert Lahood, senior military instructor at Francis Lewis High School. “It’s exceptional to earn the award in and of itself, but to do that with a perfect score, that’s exceptional. It’s exceptional among the exceptional.”
Honor unit with distinction is the highest award, followed by honor unit and merit unit. Programs are evaluated based on factors such as community service, administrative abilities, classroom instruction and students’ ability to retain and apply what they learn in the program.
The second ROTC Army Brigade includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Germany.
The other high schools that have a JROTC program are Long Island City High School, Morris High School and Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, Xavier High School in Manhattan, Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn and Port Richmond High School in Staten Island.
And this isn’t the first time that the program has received the distinction. Just three years after its JROTC program was formed in 1994, the school got an award of honor unit with distinction.
The program, which has about 1,025 students, consists of battalions, companies and platoons. The battalions provide organizational leadership. The companies, which are intermediate leaders, provide purpose, direction and motivation to the platoons, which are the executors.
“The mission of the program is to educate students to become better citizens,” Lahood said. “In doing so, we work with students to keep them in school, keep them on track and prepare them for graduation. This program has been successful as our students — the cadets that stay with the program — we have a 100 percent graduation rate.”
The students’ community service projects include partnering with the Qdoba Mexican Grill Restaurant to raise money for Habitat for Humanity New York City, partnering with the Applebee’s restaurant to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, planting flower bulbs in the Kissena Corridor Park in partnership with the office of U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Bayside) and a food drive for City Harvest. About 500 students participated in this year’s Veterans’ Day Parade.
The cross-country team, the Raiders, compete in Malina, Ga., every year, competitions in New York City and the Fort Dix competition. The drill team has won the National High School Drill Team Championships in Daytona Beach, Fla., twice.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtoure@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.
