San Francisco schools' special salute

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 6/10/8 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

Wonder why San Francisco has a reputation as the American left's most intolerant city? Consider the fact that concerned San Francisco citizens are now gathering signatures for a ballot measure advising the school board to overturn a 2006 vote to shut down the 90-year-old Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. You see, the San Francisco school board only recognizes the right to expression with which it agrees. Disagree, and the board will shut you down. If students suffer - well, that's politics.

Quincy Yu is a leader in the effort to gather the 7,200 signatures needed to put the advisory measure on the ballot. Yu is a native San Franciscan and Stanford MBA whose son attends Lincoln High School. Her son is not a JROTC participant. He plays football. "The kids in JROTC are not exactly the football-player types or those who go in for student government," Yu explained. The beauty of the program is that it provides students the right structure to develop leadership and workplace skills.

When the board was preparing to vote to kill the program, Yu told me, "I thought, no way is the board going to do that." There were 1,600 students enrolled - the number has been whittled down to 1,200 today - in a program supported by parents and educators, in part because it has provided strong role models for minority teens. When the board turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the many people who turned up at public meetings to save the program, Yu said, it "galvanized me."

[SmithL]

San Francisco Values:

The plight of students who benefit from JROTC was less important to the school board than a chance to bash the military.

[gridlock]

[ktime]

San Francisco is an unpatriotic, Marxist, cultural waste-land.

[Lizavetta]

You see, the San Francisco school board only recognizes the right to expression with which it agrees.

How true.

[Marie2]

I read that it’s an “advisory measure,” so even if it passes, will it make a difference.

[LetMarch]

So often, those that oppose strength and prepardness,believe this will produce peace. Some said, “History has never produced peace through weakness.”

[CaspersGh0sts]

And the rationale for the board's heavy-handed vote? I kid you not: Board members, who denied parents and students the right to opt for JROTC, argued that the program did not impart "critical thinking."

I'm pretty much shocked to see this in a MSM paper--allthemoreso in a San Francisco paper.

[PanzerKardinal]

The JROTC program in the San Francisco schools was a program that served mainly Latino and Asian students from the poorest parts of the city.

Most came from immigrant families. It taught them patriotism, discipline and teamwork. It also gave the students a sense of belonging to something other than sports teams or gangs.

The JROTC program had been under attack for a long time. For example in 1992, the school district took away the drill team’s rifles, because the school board didn’t want to encourage a “gun culture”. These drill rifles couldn’t never have fired a bullet. The drill team was given white broomsticks as replacements.

[wintertime]

ping