Military recruiters calling high school students at home is nothing new. My mother-in-law was famous in the family for telling recruiters "you can't have him" when they called in the late '80s looking for my wife's brother. With an unpopular war dragging on in Iraq, it's not surprising to think that recruiters are having a tough job convincing high school students to join the military. However, they have an ally of which you may not be aware: your local public schools.
As you may or may not know (but knowing this site, you probably do), schools that receive federal funds are
required to turn over student contact information to military recruiters on request. It's part of the
No Child Left Behind law. The law allows students and parents to direct schools to withhold their information if they so choose. It also requires schools to notify students and parents of the existence of the law and their opt-out rights.
There is no mention of how schools are to comply with the requirement of public notification. After learning of this issue at Daily Kos, I contacted my local high school to find out how they notified the public. They printed two sentences on the back cover of their School Calendar (issued at the beginning of the school year), stating
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, school districts receiving federal education funds must, upon request, provide military recruiters and institutions of high learning the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of high school students, unless the student and their parents exercise their right to prohibit release of the information in writing. Parents and students who wish to exercise that right should call the XXXX XXXX High School guidance office at ###-####, ext. ####.
Since my children currently attend parochial school, and have since beginning school, I'm not completely surprised that I've never received this calendar before. However, I was pretty certain that such an inconspicuous mention in a text-dense publication would easily be overlooked by many readers.
A bit of web research on this issue led me to Leave My Child Alone!, a group that has tackled military encroaching on potential recruitee privacy. It has fantastic resources to help you organize an effort to get your local school board to address this issue.
Now, "address this issue" can mean different things to different people. Some schools have chosen to eschew federal funding altogether. Some have adopted policies of "opting in", and withholding students' information by default instead of disseminating it. And some have simply made the public much more aware of the issue by sending letters and opt-out forms to them in addition to other regular correspondence.
This last was the goal I set when I decided to approach my local high school about changing their current policy. You may think that I set my sights too low, but I thought my odds were best with this approach.
My fist step in engaging the school district was to follow the calendar's advice. So I called the Guidance Office and explained my concerns. At first, the people with whom I spoke were confused. My children were not yet old enough to be in high school (though my oldest starts this fall), and I wasn't calling to opt them out (though I have since submitted an opt-out form for aforementioned oldest child). When I finally got the idea across to them that I was looking for information on how to get the communication policy changed, they directed me to the high school principal.
The principal was pleasant enough, though also a bit confused at first about the reason for my call. When I explained it to her satisfaction, she directed me to talk to the school superintendent, since it was the superintendent's purview to set such policy for the district.
I never actually spoke to the superintendent. All of my calls were handled by her assistant. I explained what my concerns were, and that I wanted to discuss alternatives. The assistant said that she'd find out if the superintendent was open to changing the policy. I faxed over a letter and four pages of background material, which I then mailed to them.
A few weeks later, I followed up the call with another one. On this call, the assistant told me that the superintendent had received the material, but that she was not planning to change the policy at that time. I asked for a justification for keeping the policy as it was. The assistant did not have one, but said that the district was "more than following the law". I pointed out that the district was in fact only meeting the bare minimum required by law, and asked for an opportunity to discuss the matter in person with the superintendent. I did not get an appointment at that time, so I dropped in on the district office a few days later, reiterating my request for a change in policy or a justification for the existing one. I also informed the superintendent's assistant that I would be visiting the next school board meeting if I received no response to my request. (This conversation took place in the reception area of the district offices, and I think the superintendent came out to size me up, but did not speak to me. I wouldn't know her by sight, but the lemon-eating expression on her face suggested that she wasn't incredibly happy at the time. The receptionist, with whom I graduated from the high school in question, was actively suppressing laughter while I calmly browbeat (my wife's description) the assistant.)
A week later, I got a letter from the superintendent. It extolled the many ways that the district complied with the NCLB requirements, and ended with the following:
Please know that we continue to look for opportunities to raise awareness of this section of the No Child Left Behind Act. One new avenue is that we will be including a Parent Notification and Reservation of Consent Form in our Back to School Packet mailed out to Parents in August.
I let the self-congratulatory tone of the letter slide. I got what I was after.