Vote NO on V
The San Francisco Unified School District, led by Superintendent Carlos Garcia, is making important progress toward narrowing the achievement gap, increasing teacher salaries, encouraging parental involvement and decreasing truancy.
A major component of this progress is the Public Education Enrichment Fund that invests city general fund support into key educational areas, such as music and art, physical education, math and sciences, and school libraries that have withered away because of reduced state investment in public schools.
It appears that one of the consequences of reduced funding for a diverse set of electives had been students opting to take Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as an elective substitute for P.E. The national military continues to discriminate against the LGBT community. Until such time as that policy is changed, we cannot support JROTC in San Francisco public schools.
We acknowledge that JROTC does not discriminate locally, but it provides a path to military service. We believe that the egregious discrimination must end against gays and lesbians in the U.S. military.
Even with the former elective credit, less than 3 percent of all students chose JROTC. When elective credit was withdrawn, less than 1 percent chose JROTC. The school district should be encouraging healthy lifestyles, teaching leadership skills, and giving students electives in which they want to participate and excel.
A little over 10 years ago, the San Francisco school board stopped allowing the local Boy Scouts to use free meeting space in the schools because its national organization had a stated policy of discrimination against our LGBT community.
Two years ago, the school board voted to phase out JROTC because the military also discriminates against our community. Instructors who teach in the JROTC program cannot be out of the closet. LGBT students who go on beyond JROTC must keep quiet about who they are, or be ousted by the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
The school board created a task force to identify a replacement. Though the alternative has had problems getting off the ground, progress has been made, as two alternative leadership classes are now being piloted.
And recently, a majority of San Francisco school board members voted for another alternative to JROTC, creating an emergency response training course, Student Emergency Response Volunteers, which will offer leadership training for the district's students without the military overtones. As part of its skills-building, students will receive Red Cross, CPR, first aid, and emergency disaster training. Initial feedback from students shows that it offers them the kind of skills they want to learn.
Proposition V is a policy statement in favor of reinstating JROTC in the schools, though the district and the board are actively working on other options.
There are alternatives to JROTC that can help students fulfill their potential without bowing to the pervasive discrimination found in the U.S. military. We can do better.
Please vote no on V.
Bevan Dufty is supervisor in District 8 and Laura Spanjian is a board member of Equality California.
Bay Area Reporter
October 30, 2008