On January 23, 2024, our representatives met again with SDUSD board member Richard Barrera and Chief of Staff Enrique Ruacho. At this meeting, our coalition representatives emphasized the need for the district's consent form for JROTC enrollment to adhere to the principle of "fully informed consent." At that time, the form utilized by the district contained misleading language and omissions. Enrique Ruacho asked us to submit a version of the consent form with our suggested changes inserted and tracked, which we did.
On February 22, 2024, our coalition representatives met with Chief of Staff Ruacho and two members of the SDCS staff, Jennifer Roberson and Athletics Director Scott Giusti, to discuss the specific language of the district's consent form and our suggested changes. Although there were some disagreements among our respective parties, there was a consensus that the consent form would be revised to include our coalition's suggested language clarifying that JROTC classes do not satisfy any of the requirements, e.g., A-G, for admission to California's public universities. As justification for this, we emphasized the history of some school site staff falsely telling students that JROTC would help them qualify for college acceptance. We also recalled the district's failure to provide adequate instruction and counseling that encourages w orking-class, Chicano students to aspire to a university education. For these reasons, a clear statement that JROTC courses do not fulfill A-G requirements is essential to obtain "fully informed consent" from students and parents that is mandated in the district's 2023 resolution.
We also agreed that the consent form should be corrected to comply with the board resolution's requirement that states that JROTC classes are taught by "retired military officers," rather than simply "retired instructors." Furthermore, we pointed out that, pursuant to the board resolution, the consent form must provide a method "to indicate whether or not JROTC is being chosen in place of regular physical education." We left the meeting believing that these critical changes would be made in the district's consent form and used for any additional JROTC enrollments going forward. It was told to us that the JROTC program manager would be given the new version of the form to review.
Despite our agreements, on March 12, 2024, we received an email from Jennifer Roberson stating that the district would make no changes in its present consent form for JROTC programs. It appeared that the consensus reached by our coalition, Chief of Staff Ruacho, and the other two district staff members was unilaterally vetoed, presumably by the district's JROTC program manager. This is an outrageous, unacceptable action by the district. It is an affront to the principle of institutional transparency and inconsistent with the board's mandate requiring fully informed consent prior to JROTC enrollment.
Although the faulty consent form has already been sent to district schools for its use during the 2024-25 academic year, we encourage the board and superintendent to remedy this egregious action by district staff.
Sinceramente,
Patrick Velasquez, Ph.D.
Co-Chair
San Diego Concilio
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Revised: 06/05/2024 GDG
