Pitched Battle Over ROTC In S.F. Schools

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2008
By Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Kicking the military out of San Francisco high schools has been neither easy nor cheap.
The school district is spending almost $1 million to pay for 10 Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps instructors to oversee nearly empty classrooms as the program phases out this year, and for seven extra physical education teachers to take on the students who used to fill those empty seats.
The double staffing is rooted in the school board's decision in June to stop granting PE credit for JROTC before the program was officially dissolved. That forced the district to keep JROTC instructors this school year while hiring qualified teachers to handle the flood of students seeking required gym credit.
The 90-year-old JROTC will end in June - unless the district school board has an 11th-hour change of heart sometime before then.
A Nov. 4 ballot measure, Proposition V, hopes to sway the board with a nonbinding vote of public support for the program, which is still offered in seven district high schools.
Meanwhile, a promised alternative course meant to embrace the positive, non-military aspects of JROTC classes - such as leadership training - isn't living up to expectations, critics say.
"To me, it's a no-win situation," said school board member Norman Yee, who supports eliminating JROTC, but wants the alternative course in place first. "This is exactly what we don't need to improve our education, to get distracted like this."
A pilot ethnic studies course was a last-minute selection to satisfy the school board's demand to have a JROTC alternative in place. But it has attracted few students and wasn't originally designed as a replacement.
School board President Mark Sanchez, who led the effort two years ago to eliminate JROTC, said he still feels strongly that the military program has to go, despite the phaseout costs and the makeshift replacement.
"We already have leadership programs," he said, referring to peer resource programs, which include peer mentoring, tutoring and conflict resolution at the high schools.
Falling enrollment
He also noted that district figures show that JROTC enrollment dropped from 1,650 two years ago to about 500 this year.
"There are very few kids we're taking the program away from," Sanchez said.
But supporters of JROTC counter that enrollment plummeted this year after the school board voted in June to no longer grant PE credit for JROTC courses.
JROTC cadets can get only elective credit now. But students don't often have time in their schedule for more than one elective and often fill that spot with a foreign language course.
JROTC supporters said they were surprised that more than 500 students enrolled this year despite the changes. They expected less than half that.
"I think it shows again the fact that despite the rhetoric, students and parents are standing up to the school board," said Michael Bernick, co-chair of the Proposition V campaign. "I think it's a testament to the value of the program."
Many of this year's JROTC cadets opted to add the class to their course load, taking JROTC in the zero or seventh.
Balboa High School sophomore Scott Leung, 15, signed up to take JROTC during both periods. He was a JROTC cadet last year as a ninth-grader, earning PE credit.
"It's kind of disappointing that not many freshmen or sophomores are in the program."
Balboa's top cadet, Yvonne Ho, said she there weren't many underclassmen to lead now that she's a senior.
A lack of choice
"In America, it's about choice," she said. "But they're not giving the students any choice at all, and it's unfair."
The ethnic studies pilot program - which is offered at Lincoln and Balboa high schools - is supposed to be the first of a four-year sequence that would later include service learning, an internship and a leadership project.
At Lincoln, 45 students are taking the course. At Balboa, 14 students sat in teacher Wentworth Houston's ethnic studies course Wednesday.
During the hour class, they talked about slavery, housing prices and ethnic stereotypes. A few had chosen to take the course. Others opted for it after they couldn't get into a preferred elective.
Jacqueline Gamez landed there unhappily after she couldn't get into a ninth-grade Spanish class, her counselor choosing ethnic studies for her.
None of the students knew the course was a JROTC replacement.
In fact, Houston - who helped create the curriculum over the past year - didn't know it was the pilot program until June. On Friday, he had no idea the course was supposed to lead off the four-year leadership sequence.
"We're actually being used," he said, his voice filled with astonishment. "Ethnic studies committee members don't support using the course as a replacement and don't support doing away with JROTC. They got the wrong group."
Yet, Lincoln's ethnic studies teacher, Conrad Moore, was optimistic that the course could lead off a leadership program by offering a broader perspective about society and encourage students to go out and create change.
"I don't think it's an unfair expectation to make on a class like this," he said. "I think it should encourage leadership in students."
Board member Yee, who is running for re-election in November, said the school board needs to take a hard look at the pilot program.
"I think the question I have to ask is, in this pilot program, where are we heading and why are we heading there?" he said.
"They loved the drill team stuff, marching," Yee said. "To me, those were things I was hoping we could include as much as possible in one program."
 
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