COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
Facing Federal Cuts, High School Yields to Military Recruiters
Eric Boylan, Daily Californian
May 31, 2007
After being threatened with federal funding cuts, Berkeley HighSchool will no longer be the only public high school in the country
to withhold student contact information from U.S. military recruiters.
The Berkeley Unified School District school board decided last month
to release the information after Superintendent Michelle Lawrence
received a letter from the office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
threatening the withdrawal of federal funds, said district
spokesperson Mark Coplan.
The cut of federal funding would amount to a loss of $10 million
annually, or 10 percent of the district's budget, he said.
High schools are required to release the information of all juniors
and seniors under the No Child Left Behind Act, passed in 2002.
However, Berkeley High had not been releasing the data, instead
giving students the option to elect to have their information passed
on, Coplan said.
There were an average of 16 to 24 Berkeley High students per year who
completed the form to have their information released, Coplan said.
Students now have the option to opt out of having their information
passed on, a policy school board member Nancy Riddle said
administrators have been working hard to make clear.
Instead of simply handing the information over to recruiters, school
board members, along with Principal Jim Slemp, decided to hold
assemblies for juniors and seniors to inform them of the situation
and provide them with the chance to decline, Riddle said.
The district is aiming to get responses from all students so it will
not hand over information without each individual's consent, Coplan said.
A preliminary count showed that approximately 90 percent of students
had opted out, said school board member Karen Hemphill.
Coplan said the district has not released information to recruiters
in the past in accordance with its general policy of not giving out
student information to any agency without consent.
The requirement outlined in the No Child Left Behind Act disturbed
school board members from the beginning, Coplan said.
"As soon as they saw (the provision), they thought it would be
unconscionable and beyond the trust that we have been given (by
parents and students)," he said.
While the school board initially considered fighting the provision in
court, it decided its legal position was weak, Hemphill said.
Their "Plan B" she said, was "an aggressive opt-out policy."
Parents, too, have been involved with staff members in the effort to
inform students, Coplan said.
Elijah Ford, a senior at Berkeley High, said the assembly was informative.
"They explained everything very well," he said. "They gave us a choice."
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