Hueneme High to Offer Naval Reserve Officers Training : Schools: Starting in the fall, the campus will launch the only ROTC program in Ventura County.

Hueneme High School is looking for a few good boys and girls to join a new program.

Benefits are excellent: exotic field trips, exercise camps, the possibility of college scholarships and a chance to see the world.

But it’s not for every teen-ager. Aside from developing a preference for calling people “sir,” the students are required to improve their posture and grooming. Boys have to get a haircut--short on top, close on the sides--and girls are not permitted to wear makeup.

But their biggest sacrifice is fashion. One day a week, they must wear neatly pressed blue pants, starched white shirt and spit-shined black shoes . . . the uniform of a cadet in the Naval Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps.

Starting in the fall, Hueneme High will launch the only ROTC program in Ventura County. Funded by the U. S. Navy, the program will be taught by Navy instructors and offered to students from the ninth through 12th grades. School officials expect about 25 to 30 students to enroll on the Port Hueneme campus this fall.

“It’s like sending your kid off to military school,” said Navy Petty Officer Kathryn Maynes, who works in the program’s Southwest regional office in San Diego.

At the urging of Principal Terry Taylor, Hueneme High had been attempting to land the program since the mid-1980s, when Oxnard Union High School District trustees approved it.

But it wasn’t until this year that the Navy finally was able to find the dollars to expand its ROTC program. The number of high schools offering ROTC will jump more than 40% this year, to 312, a Navy spokesman said.

In February, the Navy called Taylor to tell her that a unit was available. On Wednesday, trustees approved the two Navy instructors, the last step in bringing ROTC to the Hueneme campus.

“I think it’s a very positive experience for our kids,” said Hueneme High activities director Stanley J. Daily, a longtime Camarillo councilman who was battalion commander in the California Cadet Corps at Oxnard High School in the 1950s.

The four-year course, which does not obligate students to the Navy after they graduate, is designed to instill self-confidence and military discipline and produce leaders, officials said. Besides using it as a recruiting tool, the Navy also intends the program to be an antidote for gangs and drugs.

“This is seen as a way to address the problems of youth,” said Hans Krucke, the civilian head of the program.

Hueneme students will take one ROTC class a day, studying such subjects as naval history, geopolitics and navigation. One day a week, they’ll dress in Navy uniform. Field trips will take them on board ships at Navy yards in San Diego and jet fighters at the Top Gun aviator school at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego County.

According to the Navy, 97% of ROTC graduates either join the service or go to college. For many, the program supplies a taste of military life before they have to sign up for the real thing, enabling them to avoid a possible mistake.

“The kids get a feel for what they’re getting involved in, before it may be too late,” Maynes said.

ROTC programs have come and gone over the years in Ventura County.

Simi Valley High School offered an Air Force ROTC program until two years ago, when budget considerations and “dwindling numbers” of students prompted the Simi Valley Unified School District to drop it, Assistant Supt. Susan Parks said.

Hueneme officials, however, believe that the demand will increase, reaching 100 students in two to three years. Unlike Simi Valley and most other areas in the county, the city of Port Hueneme is influenced strongly by the area’s two major Navy bases.

Many Hueneme students are children or relatives of military personnel, particularly at the Seabee Naval Construction Battalion Center in the heart of Port Hueneme.

“We feel the program will be very well received by the school and the community,” district Assistant Supt. Gary Davis said.

How will other students react to the young officer candidates parading in their uniforms?

“At first, ‘till they get used to it, hmmm, I don’t know,” Taylor said. “But it shouldn’t be a big deal--they see the military all the time around town.”

The Navy will pay for all the expenses in the Hueneme program for two years, then split the costs with the school after that.

Krucke said uniforms cost more than $18,000 for an average school. Instructors, books and materials are about $45,000. The Oxnard district will decide whether to keep the program based on a variety of factors, including enrollment, Davis said.

Although ROTC was not considered “cool” by students in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the new generation does not have the same attitude toward the military, Taylor said.

“Surprisingly enough, kids are more conservative than people think,” said Taylor, whose father was an Air Force master sergeant. “People understand today that we have to have a military.”