Alternatives to Military Service

At Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, we passed an update of the language for the school policy regarding the release of student information to military recruiters.

I questioned whether or not this language should have also applied to civic service alternatives like Peace Corp, Americorp, or whatever programs may fall out from the presidential debate rhetoric. Many candidates favor civic service alternatives to the military options.

Surprisingly, Bruce Silva mentioned that he had never received a request from any civic service alternative program to recruit high school graduates. What a shame.

It seems to me that our Congressmen should insist that student records submitted to any one agency be submitted to all so that the student has a balanced look at what options life has to offer in serving one's country.

Military Recruiting Dirty Tricks

I found this diary entry on the Daily Kos website. Why is our government operating this way - entrapping students who don't know better? This is profoundly disturbing activity.


In part from: High School Military Recruiting: My Son's Story by blue jersey mom

Friday was spirit day at my son's public high school. A pep rally was scheduled in advance of the soccer and football games this weekend. On the PA system in the morning the students were informed that that the school was holding a raffle for an iPod and that the raffle was sponsored by a local radio station and the US Army. The students had the opportunity to enter the raffle during their lunch break.

The raffle table in the lunch room was manned by three school staff members and a local radio personality. No military recruiters were present on the school campus. My son went over to the table, and he was about to fill out one of the raffle tickets. He noticed that on the bottom of the raffle ticket, in small print, the student was notified that by entering the raffle, his or her personal information would be shared with the US Army.

Fortunately, my son was smart enough not to enter the raffle. But how many other minor student's personal data have been shared with the military against their parent's wishes?

Speakers on campus

I've been thinking about this for a long time and I've come to the conclusion that the Policy Committee needs to pass a policy that only allows government representatives a certain distance within the school grounds based on the educational funding gap that level of government represents.

For example, the federal government passes plenty of mandates that cost plenty of money and they send pennies on the dollar to the schools. My thought is that anyone, including military recruiters, be required to only visit the very corner of the school parking lot at the nearest to speak their piece. They can use a bullhorn if they like but that's all their pennies buy them.

If they bring baked goods, sell them and donate the proceeds, we'll let them park in a visitors spot.

We have no such problem with the State, they've been calling it in for years, they refuse to vote on legislation that would fund special education, and so on. We'll give them a special number to call of a cell phone that has no battery because the funding isn't there.

It also keeps the air in the school from getting stale quick. Let's keep it in mind shall we?