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MPS Works to Resolve Clash With Recruiters; Schools Will Emphasize Opt-Out Choice for Students

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

The Milwaukee Public Schools leadership agreed Thursday night to take more steps to educate families about their right to "opt out" of a federal requirement that schools provide names, addresses and phone numbers of students to military recruiters.

The administration also agreed to review the level and nature of recruiting inside the schools by military personnel.

The School Board did not take the additional step, however, originally proposed by board member Peter Blewett, of limiting military and other recruiters to three days of visits per school year.

Several students representing Milwaukee's Riverside High School and high schools in Wauwatosa and Shorewood displayed signs at Thursday night's meeting that read, "Education not militarism."

Board members discussed two related issues at the Thursday meeting: the complaints of some students of aggressive recruiting techniques by military representatives in the schools, and how best to notify parents and students of their right to opt out of having student information turned over.

The discussion is part of a broader debate in several cities considering a provision in the federal No Child Left Behind law that requires schools receiving federal education money to provide military recruiters with students' names, addresses and phone numbers.

"One of our fundamental obligations is to protect the privacy of students and their families," said Blewett, who ultimately voted along with all eight board members present in favor of the resolution.

That resolution instructs the district leadership to list all the ways in which the opt-out information is being made available to parents and to specify all "cost-effective" means of getting the information to parents.

The military receives the student information unless parents (or a student who is 18 or older) submit an "opt-out" form. MPS officials estimate that the forms are filed for less than 1% of students.

Currently, parents can learn about the opt-out provision only on a back page of the student handbook, where the language is confusing, Blewett said.

District officials said they will try to contact parents at the start of this school year by other methods, including sending high school families postcards and calling them using an auto-dialer.

"We will do everything we can to get the word out," said MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos. The move "isn't a stand on the war" in Iraq by the school district, he said.

Because federal law gives military recruiters the same access to students that college recruiters receive, military representatives have become a visible presence at many high schools, where they set up tables in cafeterias or make presentations.

There was no public testimony taken at Thursday's meeting, but at a hearing Tuesday on the issue, 18 people, most of them MPS students and parents, testified in favor of limiting military recruiting and making parents more aware of the right to opt out.

Several MPS students criticized the conduct of military recruiters who had visited their high schools. Adam Breihan, a 17- year-old senior at Riverside High School, said after he told a recruiter that he didn't want to deal with him, the recruiter physically blocked him from continuing down a hallway and argued with him. He said the conduct of the recruiters has become "increasingly aggressive."

Breihan added in an interview Thursday night that he learned about the opt-out provision by finding a copy of No Child Left Behind online.

"That shouldn't be the case," he said. "We should know about this from our school district."

Jayme Morgan, another Riverside senior, said one military representative made a suggestive remark to her when she walked by the recruiters' table.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command based at Fort Knox, Ky., said in a Wednesday interview that relations between recruiters and high schools are determined at the local level, but that generally such relations are good. Visiting high schools is a key way of "starting that conversation" that can lead young people to join the military, Smith said.

Smith said he did not know of any figures showing how many parents nationwide have used the "opt-out" rule to hold back student information from recruiters.

Andrekopoulos said that it was clear from the testimony of students that school administrators needed to communicate more with principals about the nature and amount of recruiting going on within the city's schools.

If recruiters are constantly in the cafeteria at lunch, "you're opting in just by showing up for lunch," said board member Jennifer Morales. "It's a trap, in a way."

Anthony Smith, another Riverside student, said he was glad that progress was made at the meeting but wished the resolution that passed had spelled out more explicitly what steps the administration would take to notify families about opting out.

Alan J. Borsuk of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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