JROTC saved from financial ax

By M. Patricia Titus
Staff Reporter

Their efforts were successful, even though most of the student group members didn’t get a chance to speak before the program’s fate was decided.

IRSD School Board members called a halt halfway through a long list of speakers signed up to appeal to the board on the subject at their Dec. 13 meeting. The remaining speakers were relegated to a later segment of the meeting but didn’t stick around to comment once the Board made its decision known.

Board Vice President John M. Evans, speaking from his position as chairman of the district’s finance committee, told those in attendance he’d been involved in an intense three-month scrutiny of the JROTC and other IRSD programs to find any way of cutting their costs rather than eliminating them entirely.

As part of that scrutiny — and in the light of recent protests by students, parents and JROTC support faculty over the potential loss of the program — the committee had discussed other cost-cutting avenues with the faculty.

The compromise they arrived at was a simple one: cut the program from 12 months to just 10 or 11 months of the year, saving between $33,000 and $58,000 in extra-duty pay expenses for the school district, which is still suffering a financial crunch after problems with completion of construction projects.

Evans said the compromise of an 11-month program length had been acceptable to the JROTC faculty advisors at Indian River High School and Sussex Central High School, even though those amounts will come directly out of their own pockets.

Col. Fenton Roy, the advisor for the SCHS Army JROTC program, was one of the early speakers on the subject, just before the board discussed the matter. He made it clear that the faculty and students had already made heroic efforts to meet an enrollment standard that was another source of scrutiny for the program.

Parents of three students in the SCHS JROTC and Cadet Lt. Col. Nicholas Cain, who is one of its student leaders, all testified as to its positive impact on the JROTC participants.

They focused not only on its ability to instill values but its role in improving school performance and providing students with opportunities for their future. The testimony was greeted with cheers and applause from the audience.

Roy emphasized that the program costs the school district only $162,000 per year, once federal reimbursements are applied to the total $250,000 cost.

He said some 300 schools around the country were on a waiting list to get into the program and receive the associated funds — spots that would be vacated by IRSD if the program were terminated there and would not be open again for years, even if the district reapplied next year.

“This program won’t be back in my lifetime if it’s terminated now,” Roy said. “Will you give the students one more reason to choose Tech or Cape over Central?” he asked board members rhetorically.

That, they would not.

Evans said that if faculty members felt that 11 months was sufficient time to do the full-year program, the board should endorse keeping it going.

Board Member Donald Hattier thanked the faculty officers in charge of the program at the schools for being willing to consider the compromise and give up a portion of what they personally earned.

With that, the board unanimously voted to keep the JROTC program going.

Evans noted in his report to the board that the financial committee was still analyzing other areas of potential cost-cutting — including adult education, Southern Delaware School of the Arts funding and the Project VILLAGE program.

He said the committee would make recommendations in a report due to the board in time for its January meeting. But he emphasized that the focus of the committee was on cutting costs and thus to avoid eliminating any programs, if at all possible.

With the fate of the JROTC program assured for the coming year, many of those in attendance at the Dec. 13 meeting headed home, their battle won.