It is settled: the JROTC stays

S.F. school board to vote on JROTC

A three-year battle over whether Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps belongs in San Francisco schools ended Tuesday night with a 4-3 vote by the school board to restore the military leadership program weeks before its scheduled expiration.

More than 200 supporters and opponents of the program crowded into the school district headquarters to make their final pleas to the board. And their arguments were as emotionally charged as they were when the fight began in 2006.

"To some of you, this is a political issue," Balboa High School sophomore Malik Douglas told the board. "But to me it's a personal issue. Represent our opinions instead of yours."

Board members Rachel Norton, Hydra Mendoza, Norman Yee and Jill Wynns voted to keep the program. Jane Kim, Kim-Shree Maufas and Sandra Fewer voted against the program.

The board's vote reverses a controversial 2006 vote to get rid of JROTC in the city high schools. The armed forces, the board then argued, should not be in public schools, and the military's discriminatory stance on gays made it unacceptable.

The 90-year-old program was scheduled to phase out in less than a month.

I started following this story back in 2006 because I though it was pretty outrageous even by San Francisco standards. I went so far as to get into an argument via email with one of the original board members who was spearheading the effort to rid the SFUSD of any reminder of the hated military. Somewhat surprisingly, Dr. Dan Kelly did not win re-election to the board. That pleased me.

The story was again in the news at the end of 2007 when, not surprisingly, the school board failed to come up with a promised alternative to the JROTC.

Last year just before the November elections I was walking with my young daughter in front of my neighborhood grocery store and was accosted by an anti-JROTC woman after I stated I didn't agree with her and handed her back the flier she gave me. In true San Francisco fashion, there was a non-binding city measure on the ballot that if it had passed would have demonstrated to the world that the citizens of SF think war is icky so the JROTC should be banned from the school system. Thankfully, even the citizens of a city who overwhelmingly voted for Obama had enough sense to realize that the JROTC is an option that should not be taken away from our city's youth by thankless activist pacifists.

Since this once great state is crumbling under the weight of progressivist tinkering I'll take this story as a ray of sunshine on a stormy day.

Or maybe I'll just call it whip cream on dog shit.