Peace Talk — Autumn 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineAll a military recruiter has to do is call up your high school and say give me your list. If the school says no, it loses all federal funding. Damn. When I listened to these words from my school board colleague back in the fall of 2003, I thought “no way; that’s ridiculous,” and I vowed to take on the policy and possible legal battle.
You see, the No Child Left Behind Act, which passed with huge bi-partisan support in 2002, has a few sneaky little provisions tucked in its couple of hundred pages. Under Section 9528, schools are required to give up all names, addresses, and contact information for every junior and senior at the mere request of a military recruiter. The provision also states that the branches of the military must have recruiting access just like colleges. To refuse to comply with 9528 would result in Portland losing all its federal funding, enough to seriously damage the quality of education of our city’s youth.
A secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that the student’s name, address, and telephone listing not be released without prior written parental consent.
My colleague on the school board, Ben Meiklejohn, used his position as chair of the policy committee to deliver an Opt-In policy which would protect student and family privacy rights by asking them to indicate on a form that they actually wanted to share their information with recruiters. The school board voted 8-1 in favor, and then the superintendent of schools got some behind-the-scenes legal advice and changed the form to an Opt-Out form. We let it go, fearing the loss of dollars and not feeling ready to take this to the legal arena.
Only one district in the country has an Opt-In still on the books. All others were turned back to Opt-Out forms due to severe threats from federal No Child Left Behind overlords. Months went by, and I took over as chair of the policy committee. In this three-person committee of the Portland School Board, we crafted a tight opt-out policy as well as one of the strongest military recruitment policies in the country. Right here in Maine. All students get an emergency card at the beginning of the school year. Beginning in the fall of 2005, the card had a box to check if students wanted to keep their private information from getting into the hands of military telemarketers. As a result, 65% of the students at Portland High School opted out.
I hear from teachers that it was an incredible opportunity for students to engage in critical discussions about the current administration’s mistreatment of the US Constitution. The other portion of the policy was to hold military recruiters to the same standards as college recruiters. This meant no more doing business in the hallways; no more unlimited access to students; recruiters must make appointments; no more than seven visits per academic year; and no more harassing our youth while they’re trying to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The message: schools are, first and foremost, places of learning.
It took over ten months to get this comprehensive policy to pass in what’s arguably the most progressive city in Maine. The energy needed to get the votes from the nine-member school board came from Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi, the League of Pissed Off Voters, and the Portland Greens. They stepped up, kept the policy alive for nearly a year and did what we Mainers are good at doing ‹ having the public dialog, sticking with it, and forcing a vote in which I and other public officials were held accountable. It passed 6-3. We all must do our part to push back on the continued militarization of our country and our world. It makes sense to start at the most critical place, the point of learning in our public schools.
Stephen Spring is a member of the Portland School Board