We do not want "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in our schools.
We do not want a program in our schools that won't hire openly LGBT instructors.
We do not want our school district to spend $1 million every year for such a program. We do not want a program that is taught by retired officers from the Pentagon who are hand-picked by the military with no input from the school district, and who get paid more money than our teachers.
And we certainly do not want politicians in Sacramento, from San Diego to Redding, telling us what our local school board should do.
That is exactly what Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's (D-San Francisco) AB 223 would do. It would have Sacramento politicians from all over the state require the San Francisco school district to indefinitely continue the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps. San Francisco would become the only city in the state, indeed in the country, that is required by law to have JROTC.
Due to poorly drafted language, this bill would require JROTC in every high school in our city, not just the seven schools in which the program currently exists. It mandates the school board to make JROTC "available to pupils under its jurisdiction in grades nine to 12, inclusive."
Assemblywoman Ma states that she is "against allowing military recruitment in our schools." Good. But her claim that JROTC "does not allow for military recruitment in our schools" is wrong. U.S. Army Recruiting Command Policy Memorandum 50 requires JROTC personnel to "facilitate recruiter access to cadets in JROTC ... and sell the Army story." That is why military officials consistently brag that 30 percent to 50 percent of cadets end up in the military, and why former Defense Secretary William Cohen called JROTC "one of the best recruiting devices we could have." It is a good thing that fewer cadets from San Francisco end up in the military than cadets from other cities, but the small numbers that Ma and others claim are unbelievable.
We know that President Obama wants to get rid of the military's discrimination against the LGBT community. So did President Bill Clinton when he first came into office. We hope that Obama will succeed where Clinton failed. And we are glad that Ma says she is "100 percent opposed" to DADT. But, right now, JROTC instructors are all retired military officers, chosen by the Pentagon, who are either straight or spent their entire military careers in the closet. What kind of message does that send to our youth, both straight and LGBT?
Ma's bill would also require school district officials to give physical education credit to JROTC. This despite bipartisan efforts in recent years to tighten up PE instruction for our youth, and improve their fitness and well-being. Marching around in formation once or twice a week, or doing push-ups as punishment by your commander, is not the same as real PE instruction. JROTC instructors do not have PE teaching credentials. In fact, their "credentials" require little more than a high school diploma.
The fact is that most freshmen and sophomores who voluntarily enrolled in JROTC did so in the past to get out of PE. When PE credit was withdrawn this year, in accordance with state law, JROTC enrollment dropped over two-thirds, from its peak of over 1,600 cadets to 500 today. That should tell us all something about the real value of this program.
JROTC costs school district taxpayers one million dollars per year, according to official district figures. The average salary for JROTC instructors is $84,500 per year, plus benefits, as mandated by the Pentagon. This is far more than other San Francisco teachers get paid. In addition, the military requires the school district to hire two instructors for every 150 cadets, compared to the 300 students that one physical education teacher would normally instruct. Thus the "subsidy" that the Pentagon gives the school district for JROTC actually ends up costing us $1 million per year.
We are, of course, aware that Prop V passed last November, after downtown forces spent over $200,000 from the Committee on Jobs, the Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Realtors and PG&E. They outspent the community-based campaign 15 to 1. California voters passed Proposition 8 also, but does that make it right? Of course not.
We don't need the Pentagon in our schools, we don't need DADT in our schools, we don't need to spend our increasingly limited funds on a military program, and we don't need Sacramento to tell San Franciscans what to do.
Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club. Tommi Avicolli Mecca has been a queer and anti-war activist for almost 40 years. Marko Matillano is campaign coordinator for Military Out of Our Schools.