PEACH COUNTY, Ga. — Peach County High School's Junior Navy ROTC program has taught kids fundamentals of naval operations, encourages volunteer work, and promotes leadership skills.
13WMAZ’s Jessica Cha spoke with the school district about why they are ending the program for the time being.
Peach County's CTAE Director James Lassetter says the high school's JROTC program has been around for 25 years. Ultimately, they've decided to let it go for two main reasons.
The first reason is difficulties finding instructors. They have only two.
“It's hard closing a program,” Lassetter says. “It is a Navy program and it has been hard in the past for us to find teachers with a Navy background just because of the location. We had a hard time finding our last instructor. It went over a year-and-half. One of our teachers, I know, drives about an hour to get here every day. I know he's been trying to find something closer to home."
The other reason, enrollment numbers have dropped significantly over the years.
"A lot of students come into that intro course because they’re interested in finding out what’s going on. Then a little bit, it starts to dwindle down,” Lassetter explains. “But at the end, you should be able to have a full class, and hopefully, even two classes full of that final third-level class, and that just wasn't happening."
Lassetter says a full class should have 25-30 students. Last semester, seven kids completed the program. This semester only has four.
"We had a very active Navy JROTC program. They were out in the community a lot. If somebody needed some community service, they would call and ask for the NJROTC. They would go out and do a lot of flag presentations for several organizations. and just over the years that started dwindling out,” he says.
Lassetter says after a school survey, less than 2% of the students voted for military-related programs.
He says it's sad to see it go, but they have to do what's best for everyone.
“This is not the first program we've had to close due to low numbers and just the excitement not there because for some people we know it's needed. However, we've got to make sure that we do right by our businesses, our stakeholders that we're using our money the best way we can,” Lassetter explains.
We asked to interview an Navy JROTC student on the school's decision. The school denied our request.
Lassetter says that many of the JROTC kids are part of other programs, and says they will still graduate with some kind of career pathway.
He says that it's not the end of the program forever.
They may apply for a different military program, like the Air Force's JROTC since Robins Air Force Base is nearby.