His letter probably surprised – and alarmed – many of the parents who received it. But Tonganoxie High School Principal Mike Bogart thought they should know.

Under a little-noticed provision of the federal No Child Left Behind Act – a new law designed to improve education standards – high schools are being ordered to provide the names, addresses and phone numbers of all their juniors and seniors to military recruiters upon request.

Tonganoxie High was preparing to do just that, Bogart wrote. But families could avoid the recruiters’ calls if they signed a form exempting their child from the list.

“I’m not an anti-military person myself,” Bogart said. “I just believe in the right to privacy.”

Nearly a third of the 240 students’ families signed the exemption form before the deadline.

Bogart said Friday he was surprised by the response.

“A bit,” he said. “But there’s still two-thirds out there who recognized they may be contacted :quot; or ignored the letter.”

Few know

The new law hasn’t been widely publicized. Both military recruiters and senior school officials in Lawrence said they were unaware of it.

“That’s news to me,” said Sgt. 1st Class Donald Courtois of Lawrence’s U.S. Army Recruiting Station.

Not that it will change much in Lawrence anyway: Guidance counselors in the city’s high schools said they’d been providing student directories to military recruiters upon request for years. The recruiters use the information to pursue students through mailings, phone calls and personal visits.

Lawrence High School sophomore Daniel Miranda, right, says goodbye to his friend Steven Anthony, junior, center, after school. Under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, high schools are being ordered to provide the names, addresses and phone numbers of all their juniors and seniors to military recruiters upon request.

“We’re still operating pretty much the same way,” said Linda Allen, a guidance counselor at Lawrence High School.

Still, the new law has raised concerns, both nationally and in the Lawrence area, that the federal government is being given too much access to otherwise-private student records.

“It’s just one more step, in all of the things that are going on, to make information available to public agencies,” said Allan Hanson of the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice. “That has implications for privacy.”

Supporting the military

Courtois, whose office recruits from 17 high schools in eastern Kansas, said he’d never had much difficulty obtaining information about students from those schools. His office typically recruits between 12 and 20 new soldiers every year.

“Kansas is great,” he said. “They’re really supportive of the military here.”

Kathy Toelkes, spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Education, said state law required schools to make directories available to recruiters :quot; if, in fact, directories were being created by the schools. The schools that weren’t will now have to compile that information.

“These provisions don’t change a lot in Kansas,” she said.

¢ Download:¢ A copy of a letter sent to schools¢ A Q. and A. on why the military wants the information¢ How students can opt outhttp://www.ljworld.com/specials/military.pdf You must have the free Acrobat Reader to view these documents.

Kansas’ friendliness to recruiters isn’t duplicated everywhere, though.

Maj. Brenda Leong, director of accession policy for the Pentagon, said roughly 1,000 schools nationwide – out of about 22,000 schools – were withholding directory information by the time the new law went into effect in July.

“It had been much higher than that in previous years,” Leong said. “In the past, there were a lot of schools around the country that didn’t want to release the information to anyone :quot; not just recruiters, necessarily. This act provided a way for them to do that without having to give names to other marketers.”

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools that refuse access to directory information and to school campuses could have their federal funds revoked.

“I keep hearing about scaled-back federal government,” Lawrence Supt. Randy Weseman, a Vietnam War veteran, said dryly last week. “But I’ve yet to see it.”

Opting out

More than 1,600 students in Lawrence are covered by the new law. More than 50 students have opted out of the directory at Lawrence High School; a number was unavailable for students at Free State.

Those students and their families may be unaware of the new provisions, however. LHS’ Allen said her school wasn’t sending out a Tonganoxie-style special letter to parents.

“Basically, since we’re handling it the same way we always have, no we’re not,” she said.

Students at LHS seemed unfazed by the new requirement.

Calandra Ysquierclo of Kansas City, Mo., left, talks about joining the military with recruiter Sgt. Vincent Minghelli at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Lawrence.

“I’m not going to join the Army anyway,” said Micah Adams, a junior, “so I don’t really care.”

Arbelle Trotter, another junior, was concerned about privacy issues.

“I don’t mind for myself,” he said. “But some people don’t want their business out there.”

His friend Darrick Dew, another junior, was fatalistic.

“It’s all right – they’ll get it one way or another,” Dew said. “It’ll make people mad, but they’ll get it anyway.”

Weseman, who wasn’t aware of the law’s requirement until told by the Journal-World, said he expected some parents would want to exempt their children from recruiters’ calls.

“I’m sure this will come as a shock to our parents,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve come to realize these are sensitive issues for some people.”