1st Graders during school hours attend same-sex wedding

A group of San Francisco first-graders took an unusual field trip to City Hall on Friday to toss rose petals on their just-married lesbian teacher - putting the public school children at the center of a fierce election battle over the fate of same-sex marriage.


The 18 Creative Arts Charter School students took a Muni bus and walked a block at noon to toss rose petals and blow bubbles on their just-married teacher Erin Carder and her wife Kerri McCoy, giggling and squealing as they mobbed their teacher with hugs.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a friend of a friend, officiated.

A parent came up with the idea for the field trip - a surprise for the teacher on her wedding day.

"She's such a dedicated teacher," said the school's interim director Liz Jaroslow.

But there was a question of justifying the field trip academically. Jaroflow decided she could.

"It really is what we call a teachable moment," Jaroflow said, noting the historic significance of same-sex marriage and related civil rights issues. "I think I'm well within the parameters."

Nonetheless, the excursion offers Proposition 8 proponents fresh ammunition for their efforts to outlaw gay marriage in California, offering a real-life incident that echoes their recent television and radio ads.

"It's just utterly unreasonable that a public school field trip would be to a same-sex wedding," said Chip White, press secretary for the Yes on 8 campaign. "This is overt indoctrination of children who are too young to have an understanding of its purpose."

The trip illustrates the message promoted by the campaign in recent days, namely that unless Prop. 8 passes on Nov. 4, children will learn about same-sex marriage in school.

"It shows that not only can it happen, but it has already happened," White said.

California Education Code permits school districts to offer comprehensive sex education, but if they do, they have to "teach respect for marriage and committed relationships."

Parents can excuse their child from all or part of the instruction.

On Friday, McCoy and Carder, both in white, held hands on Newsom's office balcony overlooking the rotunda and recited their vows.

"With this ring, I thee wed!" Carder said, shouting the last word for emphasis.

After traditional photos, the two walked out City Hall's main doors where the students were lined up down the steps with bags of pink rose petals and bottles of bubbles hanging from their necks. McCoy, a conferences services coordinator, was in on the surprise and beamed as the children swarmed around Carder.

The two said they have participated in the campaign against Proposition 8 and planned to travel around San Francisco on Friday afternoon in a motorized trolley car with "Just Married" and "Vote No on 8" banners.

The two met on a dance floor two years ago.

"This is one girl I can honestly say deserves happiness, and it came in the form of Kerri," said Carder's friend Dani Starelli.

Creative Arts administrators and parents acknowledged that the field trip might be controversial, but they didn't see the big deal. Same-sex marriage is legal, they noted.

"How many days in school are they going to remember?" asked parent Marc Lipsett. "This is a day they'll definitely remember."

Carder's students said they were happy to see their new teacher married.

"She's a really nice teacher. She's the best," said 6-year-old Chava Novogrodsky-Godt, wearing a "No on 8" button on her shirt. "I want her to have a good wedding."

Chava's mothers said they are getting married in two weeks.

The students' parents are planning to make a video with the children describing what marriage is to them.

Marriage, 6-year-old Nolan Alexander said Friday, is "people falling in love."

It means, he added, "You stay with someone the rest of your life."

As is the case with all field trips, parents had to give their permission and could choose to opt out of the trip. Two families did. Those children spent the duration of the 90-minute field trip back at school with another first-grade class, the interim director said.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's not controversial for me," Jaroflow said. "It's certainly an issue I would be willing to put my job on the line for."

Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps must go

SAN FRANCISCO
School board votes to dump JROTC program
Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer

After 90 years in San Francisco high schools, the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps must go, the San Francisco school board decided Tuesday night.
The Board of Education voted 4-2 to eliminate the popular program, phasing it out over two years.
Dozens of JROTC cadets at the board meeting burst into tears or covered their faces after the votes were cast.
"We're really shocked,'' said fourth-year Cadet Eric Chu, a senior at Lowell High School, his eyes filling with tears. "It provided me with a place to go."
The proposal approved by the board also creates a task force to develop alternatives to the program that will be tried out next year at various high schools.
The board's decision was loudly applauded by opponents of the program.
Their position was summed up by a former teacher, Nancy Mancias, who said, "We need to teach a curriculum of peace."
The board's move to dismantle the popular program was led by board members Dan Kelly and Mark Sanchez with support from Sarah Lipson and Eric Mar. Casting votes against it were Jill Wynns and Norman Yee. Board member Eddie Chin was absent.
"I think people should not despair too much," Sanchez said. "I think now the work begins -- to work within the community to develop new programs that will fulfill the needs of our students."
About 1,600 San Francisco students participate in JROTC at seven high schools across the district.
Opponents said the armed forces should have no place in public schools, and the military's discriminatory stance on gays makes the presence of JROTC unacceptable.
"We don't want the military ruining our civilian institutions," said Sandra Schwartz of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization actively opposing JROTC nationwide. "In a healthy democracy ... you contain the military. You must contain the military."
Students, parents and school staff from each of the seven high schools converged outside the school board meeting carrying signs and waving at cars, some of which honked in support.
At least 100 cadets edged into Franklin Street waving their signs before being pushed back to the sidewalk by their ROTC instructors.
Yet, in the end, the effort -- one of several rallies in the last several weeks -- fell on deaf ears.
"This is where the kids feel safe, the one place they feel safe," Robert Powell, a JROTC instructor at Lincoln High School and a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said earlier in the evening. "You're going to take that away from them?"
Opponents acknowledged the program is popular and even helps some students stay in school and out of trouble.
Yet they also said the program exists to lure students to sign up for the armed forces.
"It's basically a branding program, or a recruiting program for the military," Kelly said before the meeting.
The school district and the military share the $1.6 million annual cost of the program, with the military paying $586,000, or half the salaries of 15 instructors -- all of whom are retired military personnel. The district pays the other half of salaries and $394,000 in benefits.
Earlier, Mayor Gavin Newsom weighed in on the debate, chastising the board for the effort to eliminate JROTC.
"The move sends the wrong message," he said. "It's important for the city not to be identified with disrespecting the sacrifice of men and women in uniform."
Students in the program receive physical education or elective credits required for graduation.
A budget analysis found that the district could hire nine teachers with the money the district now spends on JROTC -- enough to cover the gym and elective courses for the 1,600 students should the program be eliminated.
But there wouldn't be money to create an alternative program serving that many students, Wynns said.
"I think the people who want to get rid of it have a responsibility to look at how we're going to pay for that and what we're going to do to replace it," she added.
Newsom also said he believed the vote would push more city residents away from the public schools.
"You think this is going to help keep families in San Francisco?" the mayor added. "No. It's going to hurt."
On other matters, the board introduced a resolution that makes race a factor in deciding what school a child will attend starting with the 2008-09 school year. No action was taken.

S.F City paid for flights for illegal youths dealing crack

The most liberal city by the bay San Francisco has managed to figure out another way to break the Law, citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status. You're not going hear any protest from OBama who favors immigrant sanctuary cities throughout the United States if you really want to know how your country will run once obama is elected then just look too San Francisco.


Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008
San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.
The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation.
Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting the immigrants, but that the city's stance allows them to get away with "gaming the system."
San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the Mission District and Tenderloin.
Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be their relatives.
Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects' stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are often shielded from public scrutiny.
Unorthodox strategy
Barred by state law from sending drug offenders to the California Youth Authority and bound by a 1989 city law defining San Francisco as a sanctuary city for immigrants - meaning officials do not cooperate with federal immigration investigations - juvenile officials settled on an unorthodox strategy.
Rather than have the drug offenders deported, they have recommended that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners approve city-paid flights home to Honduras for the offenders with the aim of reuniting them with their families.
The practice, federal authorities say, does nothing to prevent offenders from coming back, while federal deportation legally bars them from ever returning. Federal officials also say U.S. law prohibits helping an illegal immigrant to cross the border, even if it is to return home.
Federal officials recently detained a San Francisco juvenile probation officer at the Houston airport, where he was accompanying two Honduran juvenile drug offenders about to board a flight to Tegucigalpa.
They questioned him for several hours before letting him go, and seized the youths and deported them.
"Our job is to uphold the nation's immigration laws," said Greg Palmore, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it's a problem whenever someone attempts to evade the law. ... Our law does not allow us to turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally."
Feds 'flabbergasted'
Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen."
William Siffermann, chief of San Francisco's Juvenile Probation Department, said federal agents have never specifically told his office not to send immigrants back to their home countries, but that he has stopped the practice until differences between the city and immigration authorities are resolved.
He said the city's stance is that it does not have to report illegal immigrant minors to the federal government, even if they are found in Juvenile Court to have committed a crime.
"We are not obligated to," he said. "We are abiding by the sanctuary city ordinance."
Siffermann added, "I don't believe we've done anything wrong." But he stressed that his office wants to make sure it is fulfilling its duties "in all arenas, with federal statutes, state statutes and the sanctuary city law."
Juveniles with beards
San Francisco police doubt that many of the young Hondurans they arrest on drug charges are even juveniles.
Police can report suspected adult illegal immigrants to federal authorities if they commit a crime, said Capt. Tim Hettrich, until recently the head of the narcotics unit.
So immigrant drug dealers "pass themselves off as juveniles, with a three-day growth of beard and everything else. It's frustrating," he said.
"Some of them have been arrested four or five times," Hettrich said. "That is one of the big problems with being a city of sanctuary."
He scoffed at San Francisco's strategy of returning the offenders to their home country. "They probably get the round trip and the next day, they will be right back here," Hettrich said.
Patricia Lee, head of the San Francisco public defender's juvenile branch, would not comment on pending cases. But, she said, "a lot of the young people have suffered a lot of abuse, abandonment and neglect in their native country and have been used as (drug-running) mules. There is lot of victimization and trafficking of these young people."
'Gaming the system'
Russoniello said the drug dealers are being sent here as part of an effort that takes advantage of San Francisco's leniency.
"What we're facing is a number of people gaming the system," he said. "Sooner or later the city will realize the advantage to cooperating (with federal authorities), whether it's the threat of criminal prosecution ... or some other method."
Russoniello would not confirm or deny the existence of a federal investigation, but juvenile probation officers connected to the case have been interviewed by federal agents about the flights.
City officials will not say how many juvenile drug offenders have been flown out of the country in recent years or how much the city has spent on the effort.
Federal immigration authorities stumbled on to the effort when they caught several illegal immigrants in December at the airport in Houston, along with a San Francisco juvenile probation officer.
The officer was on hand to make sure the immigrants boarded a plane to Tegucigalpa.
Federal authorities say they met with Siffermann and told him that any juvenile offender had to be handed over to immigration officials after completing his sentence.
The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency sent a letter to Siffermann on Dec. 17 stressing that it would soon "like to begin receiving referrals" about immigrant juveniles in custody in the city.
"The red flag was flown," Russoniello said.
City saw it differently
Siffermann, however, said federal authorities were not exactly clear about what the city could and could not do related to the flights or the status of immigrants held in juvenile cases.
"They did a little friendly stop-by," Siffermann said. "They said, 'This is something we would like you to cooperate on.' ... They said, 'Hey, look, this could be contrary to federal law, you might be in violation.' "
Meanwhile, the flights continued.
On May 15, two more illegal immigrants from Honduras were arrested in Houston, again accompanied by a San Francisco juvenile probation officer. Federal immigration authorities held the officer for more than three hours before releasing him.
Six days later, there was another meeting, Siffermann said. This time it was with a representative of Russoniello's office.
After that, Siffermann put the flights on hold. "We will look for other (approaches) for them," he said.
Siffermann stressed that the city ships out juvenile offenders to their home countries only after all other rehabilitative efforts have failed, including probation, foster care and juvenile detention.
The strategy is appropriate, Siffermann said, because deporting young offenders would doom them from ever becoming productive residents of the United States.
"It might prevent them from obtaining citizenship," he said, denying them a chance to "take a different course."
In a statement released by the city attorney's office, which is advising the city on the issue, spokesman Matt Dorsey said, "We've been in ongoing contact with the U.S. attorney's office on this, and we've informed them of our intention to address these issues in court proceedings.
"We're looking at the legal issues carefully and methodically," Dorsey's statement said, "and we're in the process of advising our client, the Juvenile Probation Department."
He said his office was not aware of the practice of flying juveniles back to Honduras.
Stranded juveniles
A recent count showed 22 of the 125 minors in custody at juvenile hall were immigrants and had no legal guardians in the United States, Siffermann said. He said his office is trying to figure out what to do with them now that flights are no longer an option.
Russoniello said the city has no choice but to comply with U.S. law and turn the youths over to federal authorities. "The alternative, now that they are all on notice, is a period of prolonged darkness," he said.
Judge Donna Hitchens, who oversees the city's Juvenile Court, said the original idea for flying youths home came from juvenile probation officials, and that it is up to them, not judges, to work out their differences with the federal government."We are only the judicial branch," she said. "The issue is between the city and ICE."