Military recruiters have upper hand at high schools

Dallas Morning News | Laray Polk:

“The bottom line? While there's a law in place for students and parents who choose to opt-out, it's a cumbersome one and a process that seems to work more in favor of the recruiters than the families opposed to such contact. It will take vigorous effort by individuals to get the needed reform within DISD to make this law work for those seeking privacy from off-campus recruitment.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The opt-out rules impact much more than just military recruitment. Many parents don't want their children's names given to vendors of fundraising merchandise. Others worry about child molesters reading about their children in newspapers. Still others don't want the military to recruit their children. These parents check the opt-out boxes, then are upset when their children's names don't show up in the school directory or yearbook. Or when a group photo shows up in the DMN Neighbors section but their child's name is left off. Or when they don't get the email from the PTA or booster club, not realizing that these are outside organizations that the school cannot release information to without permission.

Trying to design an opt-out form that explains clearly just what is and isn't being excluded is challenging enough. Feeding the results of that opt-out survey back into all the places in schools that information like this is used and released to outside oranizations is even more of a challenge. Improvements to the system are needed, but let's cut the administrators some slack. Trying to tailor the opt-out system to meet everyone's needs results in a system so complex that it fails to meet the desires of the majority of parents.