AB 223 and 351 passed through Assembly committee hearings on Wednesday afternoon at the Capitol. At least 100 San Francisco high school students stood lining the hallway outside room 126 to support the bills. Some were wearing military attire, and others wore stickers on their shirts that read “I love JROTC”. Inside, meanwhile, the Assembly Education Committee heard each bill, both involving San Francisco’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.

AB 223, introduced last month by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco), is an urgency measure, meaning that with a two-thirds majority vote in both the Assembly and Senate, it will require the San Francisco Unified School District to make JROTC courses available for students between grades 9 through 12.

AB 351, an urgency measure authored by Assemblywoman Mary Salas (D-Chula Vista), would authorize the governing board of a school district to exempt students involved in JROTC programs, along with those involved in other activities such as drill team or color guard, from physical education requirements.

The San Francisco Board of Education passed a resolution in November 2006 to phase-out all JROTC programs in San Francisco schools by the end of the 2008-09 school year, proposing to replace them with alternative motivational career programs.

The four members that had chosen to phase-out the program are no longer a part of San Francisco’s school board. Current board member Jill Wynns says that those members were opposed to the program’s militaristic association, and were concerned that the program was discriminatory toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students.

School board member Rachel Norton says that although she opposes the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military and military recruiting in high schools, JROTC instructors have reassured her that the program does not recruit students, and “Gay, lesbian or transgender students or instructors are never turned away.”

Ma introduced AB 223 in response to the 55 percent voter passage of Proposition V in the November 2008 election, which urged SFUSD to retain the program in San Francisco schools.

Several members of the Assembly committee, including committee Chairwoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica), stated that regardless of the committee’s stance on the JROTC program itself, it is not appropriate for the Legislature to mandate the program within a single school district, as AB 223 would require, because it is a “local control” issue that the school board should have authority over.

Citing prior court cases, Ma argued that although legislative policy encourages local responsibility over public education, “educational operation of the public schools remain matters of the statewide, rather than local or municipal, concern.”

Assembly committee member Jeff Miller (R-Corona) supported Ma’s argument, stating “We all, I think, agree that local control is sacred and needs to be protected; but this is a situation [where] San Francisco needs some help.”

“The question you have to ask yourself is ‘Where do the voters go if the locally elected officials will not abide by what they say?’” said Miller, referring to the passage of Proposition V.

Unless AB 223 passes, San Francisco’s JROTC programs are scheduled to end by June of this year. According to Norton, the committee charged with constructing a replacement program for the JROTC has failed to do so thus far.

“The students have been the losers here…I have never spoken to a student who was a JROTC cadet in San Francisco Unified that did not support this program or want it to go on,” says Wynns.

The San Francisco school district has participated in JROTC for 90 years, offering programs at seven public high schools, five of which are in Ma’s district. According to Ma, 90 percent of JROTC students pursue higher education, 90 percent are minorities, and over 50 percent are women of color.

Opponents of the bill testified before the committee, many arguing that other leadership-oriented programs should be implemented instead of JROTC, linking the JROTC program to potential military recruitment.

Karen Bernal, candidate for Progressive Caucus chair of the California Democratic Party, says “The idea that the state would mandate such a program here is nothing short of fascistic to me…This is the military industrial complex and our educational system at play.”

Ma states, however, that less than three percent of JROTC students enroll in the military.

Lt. Colonel Robert L. Powell Jr., a JROTC instructor, claims “Our instructors aren’t even allowed to [recruit]. We have no quotas that we have to meet.”

Both bills will now be scheduled for hearings by the Appropriations Committee.