Tag: Military recruiters

Kelly Mendoza, a mom with two kids in high school, has no problem with military recruiters who come onto campus at lunchtime to talk with kids who might want to join the armed forces.

But a new federal law requiring schools to give military recruiters the names, addresses and phone numbers of students has her worried.

Her main misgiving: the law makes it easier for recruiters to go to students, rather than have students come to them.

“Kids are too young in high school to be solicited over the phone,” said Mendoza, an Oxnard resident. “The military is a tough choice now; we could go to war any day. We have to protect our country, but it’s hard to think about your child going to war.”

The new requirement, part of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in January, allows parents and students to request that schools not release personal information. But even with that provision, the law has some school officials uneasy about privacy issues.

“As an administrator, I’m uncomfortable with giving out students’ phone numbers,” said Cliff Moore, principal of Oak Park High School. “When something’s mailed, kids have the opportunity to just throw it in the trash. But with a phone call, (recruiters) have a little more leverage.”

Still, school officials throughout Ventura County say they intend to comply with the requirement, telling parents about it by letter in the next few weeks or in handbooks sent home at the start of the school year.

Officials who don’t comply stand to lose federal money, which in some Ventura County school districts, such as Oxnard Union High, amounts to $2 million a year. The law also applies to private schools that receive federal funds.

In addition to privacy concerns, the new law raises questions of just what information schools release and to whom.

Up to now, some school districts, including Las Virgenes Unified and Santa Paula Union High, released basic information on students to military and college recruiters only if parents gave them written permission.

Many others, though, including Fillmore, Oak Park and Oxnard Union, already give recruiters some students’ names and addresses, unless parents sign forms saying they don’t want that information released.

The key, officials said, is that recruiters, whether they’re universities, employers or the armed forces, get the same access.

“If you let the UCLA recruiter in, you have to let the military recruiter in, too,” said Donald Zimring, deputy superintendent for Las Virgenes.

Military recruiters argue the new law means students will become aware of options they might not otherwise have considered.

“This will open a lot of kids’ eyes,” said Gunnery Sgt. Milton Andrews, a Marine recruiter in Simi Valley. “A lot of kids come in and they don’t join. But at least they’ve looked at the option.”

And while students may find calls from recruiters annoying, most are perfectly capable of figuring out whether the military is right for them, said Matt Lee, a junior at Newbury Park High School.

“I’m not too concerned about this being used to brainwash students who wouldn’t otherwise want to join,” Lee said. “It’s a good way to spread information. If students really don’t want to join the military, then that’s their right.”

Still, local educators and parents aren’t the only ones with privacy concerns.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to school superintendents across the state, advising them to make it as easy as possible for parents to keep student information from being released.

The letter reads in part: “(The law) subjects students and their families to unwanted release of personal information to outside entities as a condition of exercising the right — and obligation — to attend school. These concerns are magnified when the recipient of the information is the military.”

Citing similar concerns about privacy, the Conejo Valley Unified School District is taking the opt-out option allowed under the law and flipping it.

That means that Conejo Valley parents must sign a form specifically requesting the district to provide information about their children to military recruiters. If parents don’t return the form, the district assumes they don’t want their child’s phone number, and so forth, released.

Conejo officials will still not provide student information to college and business recruiters, again citing privacy concerns.

The district sent 3,000 letters to parents of juniors and seniors last month , informing them of the new requirement and asking them to return a short form if they want information released to the military. So far, it has received about 50 responses.

“We are not taking any kind of pro or con stand on military recruiting,” said Assistant Superintendent Richard Simpson. “We want students to have access to that information, but we want that access to be because they’re interested in it.”

Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers.

The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. “We don’t give out a list of names of our kids to anybody,” says Shea-Keneally, “not to colleges, churches, employers — nobody.”

But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush’s sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law’s 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student — or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

“I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law,” says Shea-Keneally. “I did not see the link.”

The military complained this year that up to 15 percent of the nation’s high schools are “problem schools” for recruiters. In 1999, the Pentagon says, recruiters were denied access to schools on 19,228 occasions. Rep. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana who sponsored the new recruitment requirement, says such schools “demonstrated an anti-military attitude that I thought was offensive.”

To many educators, however, requiring the release of personal information intrudes on the rights of students. “We feel it is a clear departure from the letter and the spirit of the current student privacy laws,” says Bruce Hunter, chief lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators. Until now, schools could share student information only with other educational institutions. “Now other people will want our lists,” says Hunter. “It’s a slippery slope. I don’t want student directories sent to Verizon either, just because they claim that all kids need a cell phone to be safe.”

The new law does give students the right to withhold their records. But school officials are given wide leeway in how to implement the law, and some are simply handing over student directories to recruiters without informing anyone — leaving students without any say in the matter.

“I think the privacy implications of this law are profound,” says Jill Wynns, president of the San Francisco Board of Education. “For the federal government to ignore or discount the concerns of the privacy rights of millions of high school students is not a good thing, and it’s something we should be concerned about.”

Educators point out that the armed services have exceeded their recruitment goals for the past two years in a row, even without access to every school. The new law, they say, undercuts the authority of some local school districts, including San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, that have barred recruiters from schools on the grounds that the military discriminates against gays and lesbians. Officials in both cities now say they will grant recruiters access to their schools and to student information — but they also plan to inform students of their right to withhold their records.

Some students are already choosing that option. According to Principal Shea-Keneally, 200 students at her school — one-sixth of the student body — have asked that their records be withheld.

Recruiters are up-front about their plans to use school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls, and personal visits — even if parents object.

“The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,” says Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. “Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.”