From the No on Proposition V campaign, www.nomilitaryrecruitmentinourschools.org
October 20, 2008
WHAT:Veterans speak out against Prop V and JROTC
WHEN: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 – 11:00 am
WHERE: War Memorial and Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Ave., SF
WHO: John Caldera, SF Veterans Affairs Commissioner, American Legion, Commander Post 315
Eddie Falcon, Vice-President, SF Iraq Vets Against the War, Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan
Stephen Funk, President, SF Iraq Vets Against the War, gay Marine who refused orders to Iraq
Michael Job, gay Viet Nam combat veteran, US Army, retired SFUSD teacher
George Johnson, Viet Nam combat vet, US Navy, Veterans for Peace
Forrest Schmidt, ANSWER Coalition, Army National Guard
Michael Wong, US Army, Veterans for Peace and Asian Americans for Peace and Justice
“Veterans know what the military experience is really all about,” says Michael Wong of Veterans for Peace. “The purpose of JROTC is the exploitation of children by adults to feed our wars for oil and conquest. Targeting youth under 18 for military recruitment is a violation of international law for good reason.”
“I support ROTC in college, but I do NOT support JROTC in the high schools,” says SF Veterans Affairs Commissioner John Caldera. “We do not allow 14 year old boys and girls to buy cigarettes, drink alcohol, drive cars or to engage in sex acts with anyone over the age of 18 without violating federal laws, so why would we support the exposure of our impressionable youth to Policy Memorandum 50 of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command that clearly demonstrates JROTC is a recruiting program?”
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said, “JROTC is one of the best recruiting tools we have.” Military recruiters are lying to our children to enlist them. Promises of education, college, job skills, duty stations and a host of other rewards are offered and often cannot be delivered. “The ‘leadership’ skills JROTC teaches are only the Army’s model of blind obedience to authority,” says Michael Wong. “This might prepare them for jobs flipping hamburgers, but not for professional jobs in a high tech, fast paced environment where you have to think for yourself – on your feet, out of the box – and intelligently adjust to constantly changing situations.”
“It’s your children we are militarizing with JROTC! The Department of Defense says the enlistment rate for students taking JROTC is 43%,” says Michael Job, Viet Nam veteran and retired SFUSD teacher. “We need to take responsibility if even one of the 43% should die in another illegal war – the blood of that one young life is on all of our hands, not to mention whom he/she might have killed in the process. There is no need to offer children up to the altar of our Armed Forces. This is not love, knowledge, or wisdom.”
Viet Nam veteran George Johnson says, “I’m proud to have voted for the 2003 Veterans for Peace resolution opposing JROTC, which concludes: ’Finally as mature and seasoned Veterans and citizens who have both experienced the horrors and futility of war, we understand the importance and role of high quality education to maintain both a Republic and Democracy. JROTC and military recruiters in public schools are the antithesis and profoundly undermine what is good and great about the United States of America.’”
“The school board made the right decision, to eliminate a homophobic military recruitment program. I strongly urge people to vote NO on V to support the school board’s courageous and moral stand,” said Stephen Funk, President, Iraq Veterans Against the War, San Francisco.
The Hunger Site
April 13, 2014 at 3:48 pm
I an the proud grandmother of 1 JROTC cadet and soon to have 2 more entire. The program at our school does not try to recruit students for service. They encourage our students to go on to college and further their education. Then to follow their dreams which may or may-not be the military.
October 27, 2008 at 11:21 am
@Petra
The DoD pays for half the instructors annual salary, not half the budget. Why do you insist on perpetuating that lie? SFUSD pays for the other half and the full cost of benefits and equipment. That’s why local taxpayers are footing $1 million of JROTC’s $1.6 million annual budget.
It also does not cost less for a student to take JROTC than PE. The average PE teacher makes $40,000 annually. Less than half of a JROTC instructor’s required $85,000 minimum annual income. JROTC regulations require 2 instructors be hired for every 150 cadets, a single PE teachers is given a typical class load of about 300 students through out the day. That’s three times as many as a single JROTC instructor. Meaning it will take fewer PE teachers to accommodate any spill over when JROTC is phased out.
Parents do have the right to take their kids out of JROTC, but they don’t always have the time or level of involvement to do so. This is unfortunately the case for many working class families where the parents have to hold multiple jobs to support the family. Perhaps the Yes on V campaign can ask their top funders (the SF Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Realtors) to stop lobbying against the increase of minimum wage and affordable housing so the parents of disenfranchised JROTC cadets can have more time to closely monitor the classes their students are taking.
You can continue to claim that JROTC was always an all volunteer course, but it doesn’t change the fact that there was a 30% drop in enrollment when the voluntary enrollment form was implemented by the district last school year.
40-50% of JROTC graduates enlist in the military, that has been the testimony of chiefs of staff from all the military branches and leaders in the DoD. The Yes on V campaign has repeatedly claimed that it is closer to 3% here in San Francisco according to SFUSD figures. That turned out to be an outright fabrication because the district itself has said that they do not keep records of how many students from JROTC enlist into the military. There’s another lie that you continue to perpetuate. San Francisco voters know better than to believe your anecdotal, conjectural and even outright false arguments.
October 23, 2008 at 11:26 pm
If JROTC is a recruiting device, then it certainly is doing a poor job in San Francisco. Only about 3% of JROTC cadets join the military after high school.
I certainly didn’t see any evidence of military recruitment when my son took JROTC a few years ago.
But don’t take my word for it. Just ask any of the thousands of alumni and parents who have gone through the program.
October 23, 2008 at 11:21 pm
To Marko:
The school district is legally obligated to fulfill each student’s right to the best education for that individual student that the school district can offer.
In regards to the issue of students being put into JROTC because of administrative reasons such as overfilled PE classes, the parent always has the right to have their child taken out of a class that is not in the required curriculum. The school district is usually quite agreeable to parents’ demands because the school district prefers to avoid lawsuits.
In fact, one time I had to go down to the district office to get my child moved from a class that simply was not right for him. (Had nothing to do with JROTC.)
JROTC has always been a voluntary class since a student has the option of taking PE instead to fulfill graduation requirements.
Thus, no student ever had to be in JROTC who didn’t want to be there.
October 23, 2008 at 11:12 pm
The Department of Defense (DOD) wouldn’t keep spending on JROTC if it weren’t working, if it didn’t have a track record; the General Accounting Office (GAO) orders the DOD to get maximum returns on their “recruiting resources.”
October 23, 2008 at 11:02 pm
In regards to the fiscal prudence issue, the Dept. of Defense picks up half the cost of all JROTC classes. Thus, it costs the school district less for a student to take JROTC than it does for a student to take PE.
October 23, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I recently read that, in Latino schools, the military recruiting budget is six times the college recruiting budget. Don’t have the URL incluing that stat at hand, but here’s one on how aggressive Latino high school recruiting is, particularly in Watsonville, http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=f8e760fbb11b129214cbb8fbb8b155cb .
October 22, 2008 at 9:22 pm
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3855/no_jrotc_left_behind/
The quote from william cohen is there as well, why are all of your arguments based on conjecture?
October 22, 2008 at 8:19 pm
@ petra meyer
“Every year a parent or guardian must sign a legal document approving the student’s course selection. Thus, an average number of 1600 students each year in JROTC is a valid indication of significant support among the student body and parents.”
It seems that you’ll do anything to skew facts. The course selection that the parents sign and students submit are a list of classes that the students would like to take, including back ups in case their primary choice classes are full. For example, my school had six class periods and a lunch period, but we listed up to ten classes in our course selection form.
But you don’t always end up with what you signed up for, 3 out of 8 semesters, I wound up in a course that I didn’t even list because the other classes were full. This is a common occurrence in increasingly crowded high schools. And JROTC is no exception to this dynamic.
That’s why in the 07-08 school year, the board decided to implement the voluntary enrollment form for JROTC to ensure that students are not placed in the class for administrative reasons. That year, only 1,050 students enrolled into JROTC, 550 less than the average, indicating that around 30% of the average JROTC enrollees were forced into the class by the schools.
Petra clearly you are a person that values a good education, so I am bewildered when you demonstrate and ineptitude in analyzing statistics. I really want to know, do you think it’s responsible governance to bleed key educational courses for the sake of maintaining this abstract sense of choice?
October 22, 2008 at 7:16 pm
@ cp0808
So you support paying an obscenely disproportionate amount for a handful of students?
I didn’t know fiscal prudence was an “ultra-liberal” value.
October 22, 2008 at 11:22 am
@marko
You say:
“But San Franciscans don’t want to pay $1 million for 500 studentsâ€
Who are you to say what San Franciscans want?
If Prop V wins will you be willing to stop stating you have an understanding of what San Francisco thinks. A little reality check is required by the “Ultra-Liberals” as they seem out of touch with San Francisco values.
October 22, 2008 at 12:46 am
Before the school board stripped JROTC of it’s PE credits, an average of 1600 students each year were enrolled in JROTC. Every year a parent or guardian must sign a legal document approving the student’s course selection. Thus, an average number of 1600 students each year in JROTC is a valid indication of significant support among the student body and parents.
JROTC has always been voluntary. No student can legally be forced to take JROTC.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask any one of the thousands of parents who have had children go to a San Francisco public high school. We have been signing those forms each year approving our children’s course selection.
Some people keeping on throwing about the claim that military recruitment is the main goal of JROTC, but any student or parent involved in the program knows that that is just not true.
Again, don’t take my word for it, ask any one of the thousands of parents or students who have been involved in JROTC. You will get much more accurate information than some quote (probably taken out of context if not an outright lie) posted on a website with a political agenda.
In regards to the drop out rate in specifically San Francisco, here is a website with a more detailed breakdown:
http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/dropouts/?appSession=62440791798741&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=1&cpipage=2&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=
Note that in some high schools, the drop out rate is way over 50% !
And yet this school board voted to get rid of a proven successful program in which 98% of the participants go on to college!
Doesn’t say much for their priorities. This might explain why many parents have such a poor opinion of San Francisco schools.
Anyway, if you don’t want your kid to participate in JROTC, fine, have him or her take PE. But don’t try to tell the rest of us that our kids can’t participate in JROTC either.
I think it is sad that some people are so blinded by a need to push their political agenda that they would go so far as to bully kids and try to take away their beloved programs just because these kids and their parents don’t subscribe to the same politics as they do.
I applaud the JROTC cadets and their parents for standing up to these them and for their right to participate in a proven successful leadership course! They are an inspiration!
October 21, 2008 at 2:16 pm
JROTC regulations also state that the class can only continue if a hundred or more students participate in the school. A criteria not met in 5 out of 7 schools offering JROTC courses. Clearly the program is having trouble following its own regulations, even with recruitment. Why else would former defense secretary William Cohen praise JROTC as “… one of the best recruiting devices we could have.”
That’s nice that JROTC taught your son things that are already taught in Government, Health, Geography, and PE classes. But San Franciscans don’t want to pay $1 million for 500 students to learn watered-down versions of things they already learn in other classes.
There are programs geared towards at-risk youth intervention that receive little to no funding, why are we paying a disproportionately higher amount for a program that has military training as its main goal and youth intervention in its periphery?
Your statistics are a bit misleading, 98% of JROTC cadets IN SAN FRANCISCO go on to college because roughly the same amount of SFUSD high school graduates go to college, it’s directly proportional to our district’s general graduation rate. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp in statistics can tell that your comparison of city-wide JROTC college enrollment rates to bay area wide graduation rates are skewed and inaccurate.
JROTC was not always a voluntary program, that’s why there was a 70% drop in enrollment this year when PE credit was removed and the voluntary enrollment form was implemented.
An interesting note to people reading these comments, check out the comments to this article in the examiner:
http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2008m10d10-For-SF-school-board-Wynns-Norton-Murase-and-a-pick-to-be-named-later
I responded to one “Morgan Sparks” comments about JROTC, they use the same arguments in favor of JROTC, even the same story about their “son.” I’ve seen these same set of arguments in that exact order surface in other news sites under different names. There seems to be a representative from the Yes on V campaign going to all the online news sites posing as multiple people to create the illusion of broad support for Prop V. It’s not at all a surprising tactic. They also brag that there are over a thousand volunteers going all over the city to get the Yes on V message out. If there really is a grass-roots effort by cadets, former cadets, and their families to build visibility for the Yes on V campaign, then they’re not doing a very good job of being seen.
Volunteers for the No on V campaign have been to all the major commercial corridors in key districts in the city and we’d typically see two maybe three Yes on V window signs in contrast to the 50-75 No on V signs we usually put up. Where are the 1,000 plus volunteers you bragged about in your letter to Beyond Chron? I guess you’ll do whatever it takes to make a business interest wedge issue look like a grass-roots campaign, right?
October 21, 2008 at 12:30 am
JROTC is not a military recruitment program. JROTC regulations do not allow for any military recruitment.
How sad that the people protesting this worthy program have never talked to any of the students or parents or anyone else involved in the program.
I was very impressed with the program when my son was in JROTC a few years ago. They learned about things such as the U.S. Constitution, first aid, and how to read a map. They also participated in community service activities such as cleaning up Ocean Beach and library drives. Marching and drills were also a regular part of the curriculum.
98% of JROTC cadets continue on to college whereas in the Bay Area only about 70% of high school students graduate from high school. JROTC is a success story.
JROTC has always been voluntary. JROTC is not for everyone but for many students, JROTC has provided them with structure, direction, and purpose. JROTC has also provided many students with camraderie and a place to fulfill their need to belong instead of looking to gangs.
Please help by voting YES on Prop V.