San Francisco to Boot
JROTC Programs
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web. November 15, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO -- High schools
across the city soon will no longer have Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps
programs after officials decided to eliminate them because of the Pentagon's
''don't ask, don't tell'' policy regarding gay service members.
The Board of Education voted 4-2 late Tuesday to phase out the JROTC from
schools over the next two years, despite protest from hundreds of students who
rallied outside the meeting.
The resolution passed says the military's ban on openly gay soldiers violates
the school district's equal rights policy for gays.
The school district and the military currently share the $1.6 million annual
cost of the program. About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in
JROTC at seven high schools across the district.
Cadets and instructors who spoke at the meeting and rallied outside argued that
the program teaches leadership, organizational skills, personal responsibility
and other important values.
''This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe,'' said Robert
Powell, a JROTC instructor. ''You're going to take that away from them?''
Mayor Gavin Newsom called severing ties with the JROTC ''a bad idea'' that
penalized students without having any practical effect on the Pentagon's policy
on gays in the military.
''If people want to participate in it and their families want them to
participate, I think they have a right to participate without putting them in
the political peril of being in this ideological debate,'' he said.
Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman, has said he didn't know of any
other school district having barred JROTC from its campuses.
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