Report Title:

Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps Program

Description:

Appropriates funds for the junior reserve officers' training corps program at Waipahu high school.

THE SENATE

S.B. NO.

2044

TWENTY-SECOND LEGISLATURE, 2004

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

Relating to the Junior Reserve Officers' training corps.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that Congress established the junior reserve officers' training corps program in 1916 with the mandate to develop good citizenship and responsibility in young people. The junior reserve officers' training corps program, which is administered through the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is taught as elective courses at more than three thousand high schools nationwide. Junior reserve officers' training corps courses are taught by active duty and retired military personnel and emphasize good citizenship, personal responsibility, and service to country. Unlike the college-level recruit officers' training corps program, the junior reserve officers' training corps program does not require participating students to join the military.

A recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private, non-partisan, policy-research institute, found that junior reserve officers' training corps programs strengthens local communities and the nation by nurturing individualism in the service of a common cause. Junior reserve officers' training corps programs develop self-discipline as well as instill the values of teamwork, motivation, and self-confidence in young people. The emphasis on these values results in a decrease of school-related disciplinary problems among students who participate in this program. Further, the junior reserve officers' training corps program does not promote militaristic anti-individualism in the participants of this program.

While numerous highly publicized projects and pilot programs touting youth development come and go with increasing frequency, the junior reserve officers' training corps program remains the oldest, largest, and time-tested public enterprise for youth development.

Accordingly, the purpose of this Act is to appropriate funds for the junior reserve officers' training corps program at Waipahu high school.

SECTION 2. There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $          , or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2004-2005, for the junior reserve officers' training corps program at Waipahu high school to be matched by the federal government.

SECTION 3. The sum appropriated shall be expended by the department of defense for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2004.

INTRODUCED BY:

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