SF schools will keep JROTC for one more year

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps gets to stay in San Francisco high schools for one more year, the district's school board decided tonight.

More than 100 students packed the meeting as the board voted 5 to 2 to extend the program through the 2008-2009 school year.

... The board voted a year ago to eliminate the 90-year-old program at the end of this school year, with a majority of members then saying its connection with a discriminatory and homophobic military means it has no place in public education.

At the time of the vote, the board also required a task force to identify an alternative program to replace the widely popular leadership program that now serves 1,200 students in seven of the district's high schools.

That task force, however, didn't meet until April. This fall, the group - consisting of district staff as well as JROTC supporters and critics - requested an extension of JROTC at all the high schools, saying there wasn't enough time to develop an alternative by this fall.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/11/MNPFTSAS3.DTL&tsp=1

[davidinalameda]

1. why doesn't the board get off their collective asses and come up with an alternative

how long does it take to come up with something else?

OR maybe they don't want to come up with something else

this is a different board than the one that originally enacted the ban

[HowHasItComeToThis]

2. HOW ABOUT JUNIOR PEACE CORP

[silverojo]

4. I second that

Now, that's something that would produce true leaders.

[tularetom]

3. Big whoop - ya get to do the manual of arms with a fake wood weapon

I was a lousy JROTC member in HS. I wanted to argue with everybody and I had a big mouth.

Come to think of it, later on I wasn't that great of a soldier - pretty much for the same reasons.

I thought the JROTC program was a friggin joke, and I can't believe any kid would think of it as a "leadership program". More of a followership program.

[Der Blaue Engel]

5. It's done a world of good for my son

I'm glad he'll have one more year if he wants it.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. I'm glad for your son and the other kids in the program.

I read your earlier thread about this and realized it's similar to the program we had in our high school called Cadets. I wonder how much the name matters here since ROTC is so clearly linked with the military.

[tuckessee]

7. Prison time does some sons "a world of good" as well.

Too bad your kid couldn't straighten himself out w/o JROTC but some people are just like that.

[Der Blaue Engel]

8. What a rude and ignorant thing to say

Too bad your parents couldn't have raised you to be less of a jerk.

[clixtox]

9. Two wrongs still don't make a right...

You sound like a jerk yourself for calling other people names and opining about some ones parents just because they expressed their provocative opinion(s).

If you don't have anything to contribute, besides the results of your superfluous monitoring, then keep your adolescent name calling expertise at your high school where it might be better appreciated.