Junior ROTC Has Been Saved in San Francisco’s Schools – HS Military Leadership Training Was Scheduled for Elimination
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 14, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
It didn’t look promising for a long time, but leapin’ lizards, sometimes the conservative underdog DOES win. Public backlash and outcry, national ridicule, and students’ cries were finally heard and listened to by the SF school board. Common sense has prevailed (unless you’re a left-winger who thinks it’s an abomination for teens to be trained to provide effective leadership in military defense against terrorists, of course).
From reporter Jill Tucker, SFGate, home of the San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. school board votes to restore JROTC program
SFGate
By Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer | May 13, 2009A three-year battle over whether Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps belongs in San Francisco schools ended Tuesday night with a 4-3 vote by the school board to restore the military leadership program weeks before its scheduled expiration.
More than 200 supporters and opponents of the program crowded into the school district headquarters to make their final pleas to the board. And their arguments were as emotionally charged as they were when the fight began in 2006.
“To some of you, this is a political issue,” Balboa High School sophomore Malik Douglas told the board. “But to me it’s a personal issue. Represent our opinions instead of yours.”
Board members Rachel Norton, Hydra Mendoza, Norman Yee and Jill Wynns voted to keep the program. Jane Kim, Kim-Shree Maufas and Sandra Fewer voted against the program.
The board’s vote reverses a controversial 2006 vote to get rid of JROTC in the city high schools. The armed forces, the board then argued, should not be in public schools, and the military’s discriminatory stance on gays made it unacceptable.
The 90-year-old program was scheduled to phase out in less than a month.
Students cheered and hugged each other following the vote, many clutching cell phones as they called family and friends with the news.
While the program will continue to be offered in city high schools, it was unclear whether JROTC courses will qualify for physical education credit next year. The board will likely address that issue at some point during the summer.
“We can make this program work if we want this program to work,” Norton said.
Douglas and other JROTC cadets told the board the program offers them motivation and direction during what can often be tumultuous adolescent years.
But Michael Wong, a member of Veterans for Peace, said JROTC offers “classic military leadership intended for war.”
The meeting grew so tense that at one point board President Maufas cleared the room to restore order during public comment after the Rev. Amos Brown refused to adhere to a one-minute time limit.
The decision to get rid of JROTC made San Francisco’s the nation’s first and only school district to dump the program for political reasons. The controversy put the city in the national spotlight, with its peacenik image once again mocked and debated by political pundits. What followed was an only-in-San Francisco political soap opera. Local NAACP leaders joined ranks with Republicans and the city’s left-leaning voters to urge the district to save the military leadership program, passing Proposition V in November.
On Tuesday night, students who fought for the program waited for more than five hours to see their three-year lesson in real-life civics end in victory.
The students filled the board chambers to capacity as they crowded into seats, on the floor and along walls, some doing homework while they waited for the vote. Others spilled out into the lobby, where a television broadcast the meeting.
Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, four board members said they were prepared to reinstate the program. The four who voted to get rid of JROTC three years ago are no longer in office.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein expressed her support for the program through a representative and urged the board to reinstate JROTC.
Three years ago, about 1,600 high school students were enrolled in the JROTC leadership courses at seven district high schools. Students could earn either physical education or elective credits for the courses, and the district split the $1.7 million cost with the federal government.
Enrollment dropped to about 500 students this year after the school board voted last year to eliminate gym credit, saying that it was unclear whether the courses met state requirements for physical education and that the district was vulnerable to a lawsuit.
State education officials confirmed this week that local school districts have the authority to offer PE credit for JROTC courses.
The JROTC program was initially scheduled to phase out in 2008, but the board extended that for a year after the district failed to come up with an adequate alternative. A pilot ethnic-studies course was a last-minute replacement in the fall, but it attracted few students and was never meant or designed to take the place of JROTC.
Additional reading:
Michelle Malkin: JROTC gets a reprieve…for now and San Francisco does something right and Saving JROTC in San Francisco
Patterico’s Pontifications Presents ‘The Jury Talks Back’: SF school board restores JROTC
The Weekly Standard, The Blog: Will Colleges Kick Obama Off Campus?
Andrew Breitbart, Big Hollywood: I, Jerk
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