New York City Military Recruitment Policy

For six years the NYCLU, the Ya-Ya Network and other community advocates have been pressuring the DOE to adopt a Chancellor’s Regulation. Finally, in September 2009, a new set of formal rules regulating military recruitment in the New York City’s public high schools will go into effect.

Read The New Chancellor’s Regulation (PDF).

This new regulation requires high school principals to:

• Ensure that military recruiters do not get free run of the schools for recruitment purposes.
• Ensure that class time is used only for instruction.
• Distribute multilingual forms to all students and their parents by early October allowing them to withhold contact information from military recruiters. New students must receive the opt-out form in their orientation packets. Opt-out information also will be added to the Bill of Student Rights. Students will only have to opt-out once during their school careers, as opposed to at the beginning of each new school year.
• Designate a staff “point person” on issues regarding military recruitment and notify students who it is.
• Develop procedures in each school for regulating military recruiter access, ensuring that students understand their opt-out rights and receive opt-out forms.
• Require schools that permit students to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Batter (ASVAB) to prohibit automatic disclosure of test results and student contact information. ASVAB is marketed as a career exploration test recruiters use that is funded and graded by the military. According to the Army’s School Recruiting Program Handbook, the main function of the test is to “provide the field recruiter with a source of leads of high school seniors and juniors qualified through the ASVAB for enlistments into the Active Army and Army Reserve…”

Click here to read more.

The new Chancellor’s Regulation is a significant step toward preventing military recruitment abuses in the schools, but the DOE now must train principals on how to enforce it.

Is your school failing to enforce these knew rules? Let us know. Contact ctolliver@nyclu.org to report any violations.