In this city long associated with the peace movement, some teens are taking an unlikely stance — campaigning to keep the armed forces' Junior ROTC program in public schools. If a school board decision stands, San Francisco would become the first city to remove a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. But supporters, including many college-bound Asian-American students who make up the majority of cadets here, initiated an advisory measure on the November ballot. They hope it will persuade a new school board to save JROTC.Board members who decided to kick JROTC out of town see it as arm of the military that reaches into schools, discriminating against gays by enforcing the "don't ask, don't tell" mandate, and recruiting teenagers for an unpopular war.
Once again any school system that deems it unbearable to allow a federal jobs program (the military) access to their campus should not receive federal funds. The JROTC program teaches high school students discipline and leadership at a young age and also offers them scholarship opportunities that other programs don't offer. Is JROTC such a bad program that San Francisco should get rid of it? Or is San Francisco so anti military that it would jeopardize the futures of thousands of it's children?
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