When high school student Trevor Reed was automatically enrolled in a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) class in 2020, both he and his mother objected.
“We don’t have to look far outside of our family to see the effect that the military has, especially when you have to go off to war. And so that’s something my son never really wanted to do,” Tineeka Reed told CNN.
So, the Chicago mother sent multiple emails to the instructor of the Department of Defense-sponsored youth military program and the principal at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School, offering an alternative. She suggested her son Trevor, 17, could enroll in an online class that would meet the required health credit. But the message Reed told CNN she heard from school administration was, “it’s either our way or the highway, or he doesn’t graduate.”
With his sights set on college, Reed said Trevor stayed in the class against his will. Read more.
