Opting Out (Counter-Recruitment) in Clark County

Opting Out in Clark County

Thanks to a tiny provision in the No Child Left Behind Act, our public schools are required to give military recruiters its students' personal information, including home address and telephone number for the purposes of military recruitment. This provision passed our Congress without discussion. Schools are forced to share this private information with recruiters unless the student has "opted out". This choice, however, is not always made clear to high school students or their parents, especially, as we found out, in Clark County. As a result, most student information gets transferred to the military for recruitment purposes without the knowledge or consent of the parents.

On August 4, 2005, several Las Vegas peace activists attended a Clark County School Board meeting to request that the school board send our proposed Clark County School District opt-out formhome with students for the 2005-2006 school year. The reasoning behind this follows:

On the CCSD registration form, there is a question: "Restrict Directory Information? Yes or No". I would bet you don't know all the consequences of what answering yes or no to this question would be. I would even bet you have no idea what "Directory Information" is referring to. Well, this is just our point. There is no explanation of this question. Anywhere. So if you must know what it means, here's what it means according to the several people I called at the Clark County School District counseling office:

Answering yes to this question will prevent the following:

1. Military recruiters from having access to your (or your child's) name, phone number, and address.
2. Colleges and universities from having access to your (or your child's) name, phone number, school records, etc.
3. The Millennium Scholarship administrator from having access to your eligible child's school information.

It's currently an all-or-nothing thing. You can't block military recruiters without blocking colleges and universities. The Millennium Scholarship caveat is a non-issue, because the counselors office sends letters home to parents of children who qualify for the scholarship and who are opted out, explaining how to initiate the application process. We believe that students should be able to opt out of military recruiters' lists without opting out of the other two. One of our goals is to accomplish this division for the school year 2006-2007.

Answering no to this question will incur the following:

1. Military recruiters will gain access to students' name, phone number, and home address and will call incessantly pressuring to join up, they will offer college money that most recruits don't end up using, they will target lower-income folks and wow them with their slick advertising, their shiny uniforms, their high-quality websites, games, "honor", boy toys, etc.
2. Colleges and universities will have access to you or your child's school information and will send literature with information which could easily be found through other means.
3. The Millennium Scholarship administrators will have access to you or your child's information and will initiate contact instead of the parent/student having to initiate contact.

SO, we proposed this Clark County School District opt-out form (http://www.lvpeacenow.org/docs/proposedCLARKCOUNTYSCHOOLDISTRICTOPTOUTFORM.pdf) to be sent home with students for this school year. It's clear, honest, and tells the whole story in a clear way and that is specific to the Clark County School District.

The four people who were able to stay at the meeting late enough to actually be heard, proposed this form be sent home in the registration packets so that all this information described above would be clear to parents and students.

Unbelievably, the Clark County School Board used the argument that they are pro-Bush and pro-war as their reasoning behind not making this information clear to parents.

Section 9528(a)(2) of the No Child Left Behind Act states that schools must notify parents of their right to opt out. We feel the Clark County school district is not complying with this section of the No Child Left Behind Act. At the meeting on August 4th, they claimed that they were working hard to notify parents of this right on page 87 of a periodical sent to students yearly. I received this periodical in the mail yesterday. The section they're talking about actually contradicts what the district employees told us on the phone, which is that once a student opts out, they don't need to do it again every year, and that it has nothing to do with the principal of the specific school because it's a county-wide operation, so, when students transfer from one school to the next, there is also no need to re-opt-out. The article in the magazine says that they *do* need to opt out again every year, and it states that "a written statement" must be submitted to the principal of the child's school. According to the counselor's office, all they have to do is put a checkmark by "Yes" on their registration form when it asks "Restrict Directory Information?" Which is it? We don't know. We recommend doing both.

But if the answer is that parents have to file a written statement, where is the notice that was sent out about this IN SPANISH? The periodical I received was in English only. How are Hispanic parents supposed to know about these things? (The form we presented was in English and Spanish...) We feel that even if the information given in the magazine matched the practices of the school district, as described by the people working there, page 87 in a yearly magazine does NOT constitute due diligence. Student privacy is being violated, regardless of the CCSD's feelings about GW Bush and the occupation of Iraq.

We feel that the Clark County School Board is purposefully clouding the issue of student information in order to keep parents and students in the dark about their rights to opt out of releasing their information to recruiters. They freely admit their reasoning behind this stand is that they support George Bush in this war on Iraq, which they somehow (still) believe had something to do with the attacks of Sept 11, 2001.

To learn more, please attend the Counter-Recruitment Workshop on Saturday, August 20th at 4pm at the southwest corner of Sandhill and Sunset: 3785 E Sunset Rd Ste 1. We will discuss how to opt out of the Clark County School District directory information, how and when to start working on your concientious objector status, the No Child Left Behind Act, ASVAB testing, and other relevant questions to military recruitment in Clark County Schools.


EDIT: I forgot to include this link: https://134.11.61.26/CD8/Publications/USAREC/USAREC%20Pam/USAREC%20Pam%20350-13%2020040901.pdf which is the U.S. Army Recruiting Command's School Recruiting Program Handbook. Telling recruiters how to take over the public schools.

Douglas County schools have a new opt out form they are distributing on the student handout when school starts. It was at the request of the school board. We did not even have to make it an agenda item. It is very self-explanatory, and user friendly.

Can you send me a copy of the form and/or a news article about it? I can't seem to find anything on it w/ Google. We might need to use this!

Thank you!!!

gbaltutis@cox.net

It's right here: http://www.dcsd.k12.nv.us/pdf/8-releaseinfo-FERPA.pdf