High schools
across San Francisco 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. Currently 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. (AP)
