We are not recruiting high school students for military service here, just trying to help local high school students to increase their college applications with some notable footnotes. The American Legion conducts an annual High School Oratorical Contest starting each Fall with competitions at the Post and County levels. This Constitutional Speech contest was begun in 1938 to increase student’s knowledge of the US Constitution. Students who progress through the levels of competition to the national contest are then competing for the top 3 scholarship prizes of $25,000, $22,500, and $20,000. Other educational programs that the American Legion support are the Boys State program and the Empire State Girls State program. These two programs are an intensive government civics educational program where students spend 5 days at local SUNY colleges with 300 to 500 other students from across the state and practice the way government works – caucuses, political parties, seeking elected positions at the town, county, state and federal levels.
These educational programs for high school students are often hard to find and access because American Legion Posts do not have large advertising budgets, if at all, to get the word out about these possible avenues of education and scholarships available from them. Our Yorktown American Legion Post notifies the local high schools in our area about these programs but never know if the word gets out to the students. To help answer questions about these programs our Post holds a ‘School Call’ Open House where students and their parents can hear about these programs and ask questions they might have. Our 2025 School Call will be held at our Yorktown Post #1009 on Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 3 PM.
