School Districts Take On Recruiters

School districts are supposed to provide military recruiters with names, addresses and phone numbers of all high school juniors and seniors or lose millions of dollars of federal funding.

But some districts, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, now are offering students and parents a legal way to protect their privacy or shield themselves from pressure to prove their patriotism during this time of possible war with Iraq.

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday unanimously agreed to turn over student data, as required by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, the federal education law passed in 2001.

The board also authorized district officials to each year mail forms each that families can use to block their data from being given to the military, other governmental agencies, colleges or businesses.

L.A. Unified school board member David Tokofsky questioned the decision, given the preparation for war.

“I think we have continued the balance between the American value of privacy and the opportunity for civic duty, but I wish we were having that debate over giving out phone numbers for voter registration as well, because far too few 18-year-olds get a phone call from anybody to be involved in the elections.”

Most Orange County districts, including Capistrano Unified, provided an opt-out form for parents in the materials mailed at the beginning of the school year.

The district has been turning over high school student contact information “for years” before the military required it, always giving parents the option of withholding, district spokesman David Smollar said.

“Parents in our district like to know the postsecondary options for their children,” he said. “The military is one of those things.”

But Therese Mims, president of the PTA council representing all Santa Ana Unified District schools, says that even giving parents a chance to hold back their children’s names and numbers isn’t enough to justify what she thinks is an invasion of privacy.

“It should be a student’s choice to go to the recruitment center,” said Mims, whose son is a high school junior. “When kids get a call at home, they think they don’t even have a choice. They might think they have to do this.”

She says recruitment of high school students, especially the poor students in her district, sends a message that they aren’t capable of any other future.

“It’s like, don’t think about college, just go into the military because you’re not good enough for anything else,” she said. “Children should be concentrating on their studies in high school, not signing up to go to war and then having to worry about that on top of everything else.”

The San Francisco Unified School District Board, fearing the loss of federal funds, reluctantly agreed last month to provide the information to recruiters. But San Francisco students now will have to fill out a card stating whether they want their information released.

The district is also studying the legality of a possible “opt in” policy, which would send information to the military only about students who actively request it.

Jill Wynns, a member of the San Francisco Unified Board of Education, where schools banned recruiters because of the military’s stance on homosexuality, said youngsters need that extra layer of privacy.

“Military recruiters are aggressive in a way that no other kinds of recruiters are,” Wynns said. “Young people are not accustomed to dealing with this kind of intense pressure.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Sandra Troeber stressed that the phone numbers are an important tool in ensuring that the nation is protected by enough well-qualified recruits in the military.

Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for U.S. Department of Education, said the requirement is simply a method to “help recruiters share information for potential military opportunities for young Americans,” and he added that each district is allowed to create their own opt-out methods, under the law.

Esther Wong, assistant superintendent of assessment and research for L.A. Unified, said the district has been providing the military, as well as some nonprofit organizations and colleges, with student names and addresses since 1994. The phone numbers are a new addition.

Families have always had an option to decline to provide such information if they filled out and mailed in a form provided in a parent and student handbook. Now, each family will also receive a letter explaining the law and their right to withhold information, Wong said.

“We hope parents do pay attention when these types of mailers come home,” she said.

A first round of such letters were mailed in the fall, she said, and nearly 8% of the district’s 65,000 high school juniors and seniors decided they did not want their information released. As a result of Tuesday’s board vote, such mailings will become annual exercises.

Luis Sanchez, associate director of Inner City Struggle, a nonprofit group that works to improve Los Angeles schools and has opposed military recruitment on high school campuses, said the law is unbalanced because many students who receive calls from the military will not hear from colleges.

He disagreed with the opt-out procedure because it requires filling out and mailing in a separate form. He prefers an opt-in method, like the one San Francisco is considering.

At Belmont High School near downtown Los Angeles, student Sandro Macias, 17, said he was going to tell his mother to withhold his phone number. “I’m against a war in Iraq, and I don’t want to fight in it,” he said.

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Staff writer Kishan Putta contributed to this report.