Eleven members of the nationally recognized Martin High School (MHS) ROTC and six of their parents have filed a grievance with the Laredo Independent School District (LISD), alleging that its board of trustees continues “to ignore the needs of the school’s ROTC program and students and as such has not been using our taxes for the needs of all MHS and LISD students.”
Thus begins the complaint filed by attorney George J. Altgelt on behalf of MHS ROTC members and students Julio Esteban Ortiz, Batallion Commander; Kayla Gonzalez; Kayla Elisa Gonzalez; Heriberto López; Kristopher Ramirez; Amber Cisneros; Carolina Cisneros; Anabel Cisneros; Azabel Isaac Brito; Joseph Antonio Ruiz; and Jonathan Javier Martinez and parents José Julio Ortiz, Jennifer Villarreal, Jessica Cisneros, Valentin Ruiz, and Renata Martinez.
The complaint alleges the action of some LISD board members to fulfill pet projects while ignoring the MHS JROTC’s repeated requests to build an obstacle course, dressing rooms, showers, and locker rooms on the MHS campus.
BATALLION CMDR. JULIO ORTIZ
Board members are not named specifically in the grievance, however, some of the alleged pet projects are discussed by interviewees in this story.
“I think we can say there has been no interest from the LISD board or its superintendent in supporting the school’s award-winning 75-year-old JROTC program,” said former MHS instructor MSG Adolfo Gonzalez. “I was there from 2009 to 2012, and we were asking back then for an obstacle course,” he added.
U.S. Army veteran Valentin Ruiz, an MHS graduate and a former member of the JROTC, said, “We were asking for the course in 1986 when I was a student.” Ruiz is a teacher aide at the school and is a parent volunteer who helps cadets prepare for the Raider competition and shooting competition.
2020 Best Overall Champions Regional Raider Competition
“Historically you will see the superintendent and trustees at Martin High sporting events, but you will not see them at JROTC competitions, and you will not see them at the military balls to which they are always invited,” Gonzalez said, adding that it was “shameful of the school district not to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of the young men and women who — like their counterparts in high schools across the nation — will likely staff the front lines of the American military. “These are future veterans, future community leaders. The members of the Martin High School JROTC need and deserve the obstacle course and amenities not only as a matter of developing mental and physical fitness skills, but also as a matter of fairness in recognition of the honors they bring to their school. Those young men and women who present the colors before a football game, in a parade, or at a city or county event, they have trained for the precision that you see, and what they do, they do with immense pride and honor. What football game does not begin without them on the field first?”
Gonzalez said that every year 10 MHS cadets each receive a college scholarship of close to $99,000.
He explained that like other school districts in a five-state district (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico), LISD has a contract with the Fifth Army Division Cadet Command for JROTC instruction. The Army pays for half of the instructors’ salaries,” he said, and in return, according to a February 1, 2012 contract, “the hosting school district is bound to make available adequate classrooms, administrative offices, office equipment, storage space, drill space, and other required facilities.”
The contract between them refers to “confidence and team building” through “authorized events” that include a leaders’ reaction course, obstacle or confidence course, rope bridging, rappelling, and water safety.
Parts of two Power Point presentations prepared in 2017 for then-incoming Supt. Dr. Sylvia Rios and the LISD trustees include photos of MHS JROTC students using campus walls and tall wrought iron gates as make-do obstacles on which to train and to prepare for Raider competitions with other schools.
BAYRON RUBIO’S VIDEO TOUR OF HOMEMADE OBSTACLE COURSE
Made aware in 2017 via the Power Point’s photos of the peril of students training on school walls and high steel gates, and well aware of the small makeshift area cadets and instructors built, LISD administration and trustees have not rushed to fulfill the JROTC’s request for a safe obstacle course.
Until very recently, that is, when brief correspondence from LISD offered these sketchy details:
“The Laredo ISD Board of Trustees have explored options to replace the current Martin High School ROTC obstacle course. After researching the needs of our ROTC cadets, the Trustees approved the construction of a new obstacle course to be located on LISD property at Martin High School with an estimated cost of $120,000. Construction is scheduled to begin this summer.”
“This is news to us,” said Valentin Ruiz. “The last we heard was that they were going to build the Martin High School JROTC obstacle course a few miles away on the grounds of Farias Elementary School on Santa María. Go figure. We don’t even have transportation like the athletics department, the band, orchestra, welding, and FFA. We usually beg for the use of the Dennis Cantu Early College van when they are not using it. If our course were to be built at Farias and we hosted a competition, where would the 25 buses of competing schools park?”
Ruiz said that JROTC instructor 1SG. Jorge Martinez and MHS principal Guillermo Pro “have done all in their power” to move the obstacle course to reality. “It has been in Mr. Pro’s Campus Improvement Plan for the last few years,” he said. “How does this work? You have $800,000-plus to spend on the purchase and renovation of the Dr. Cecilia May Aquatic Center pool — adding showers, restrooms, and offices when you don’t even have a swim team — and you can’t meet the request of a 75-year-old award-winning ROTC program?” he asked.
“Do the math on all the high-dollar LISD projects that have come to life by board action: $25.6 million at Lamar Middle School for athletics facilities; a $2.5 million tennis complex at Martin High; $6 million in improvements to Veterans Field. Including the pool, that’s about $35 million. Our kids go home covered in mud and sweat. They have no facilities so they can wash up. I think an explanation is in order from LISD,” Ruiz said, adding, “And if it is true they have a plan and have researched our needs and will build the obstacle course at MHS, let’s see those documents. Is it a kiddie course or is it U.S. Army compliant?”
Marine Corps veteran Guadalupe Alvarez, a retired postmaster and the chaplain of American Legion Post 59, weighed in on the debate.
“Let those kids have what they need. How do you train leaders without what they need?” he asked.
“They are the future. It is our duty to teach them life skills and help them with mental and physical fitness. This group has done so much with so little. I see a great shame on the educators, board members, and administrators who have degraded the cadets by not giving them something they have needed for decades,” he said.
Alvarez, a graduate of San Antonio’s Edgewood High School, served in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. After service in the Marine Corps, he enlisted in the Air Force, became a paramedic, and learned to fly search and rescue craft.
MHS CADETS & FORMER CADETS SPEAK UP ABOUT THE OBSTACLE COURSE & THEIR JROTC EXPERIENCE
CADET BAYRON RUBIO
Cadet Rubio, a Martin High School junior who has plans to enlist in the military for two four-year terms, said he wants to work in weaponry maintenance. He has been proactive in the fight to have an obstacle course built at MHS. He said he believes JROTC has given him “valuable training for the rest of my life.”
(Please see Rubio’s brief video, which is included, of the lamentable state of the homemade obstacle course the MHS JROTC uses. Requests over the years for a real obstacle course have fallen on the deaf ears of LISD board members and administration.)
JONATHAN MARTINEZ
Cadet Martinez, an MHS senior who is enrolled in the school’s Dr. Dennis Cantu Early College, will graduate next year with about 45 college hours to his credit. The 17 year-old has plans to enlist to become an Army combat medic and will continue his degree completion in the military.
After military service, he envisions a career as a medical examiner.
He said, “The national recognition of the MHS JROTC for its consistently excellent performances in the face of LISD’s false promise of an obstacle course speaks to our adaptation against the odds. I don’t care that much about winning, as much as I care about showing what we can do.”
His years in JROTC, he said, have taught him leadership skills, how to open up to others, and how to care for others.
ANTHONY MEDELLIN
“The school board didn’t keep its word to us, which was wrong. An obstacle course would have been a good thing when I was in the Martin JROTC,” said Anthony Medellin, a 2016 MHS graduate and a four-year alum of the JROTC. “But that we didn’t have one made us work harder. We improvised, trained more, mastered the fences and walls on the campus that we called obstacles, ran faster to the park and back, scaled trees with a rope, made our own balance bar with logs, and had dominion over the monkey bars,” he said, adding that the MHS cadets came home with top awards in eight of ten Raider competitions.
Currently on rotation deployment in Germany, Medellin said, “As I went through basic training, it was pretty clear who had been trained well in JROTC. I was Army-ready for drills, marches, and uniform inspections,” he recalled.
Medellin served as a commander in the MHS program. He likens his experience as a cadet to “being in a brotherhood of good advice” and said, “It motivated me to be a better student and a better citizen, to make respect part of my character.”
Of the LISD trustees and administrators who have not been able to commit to an obstacle course at MHS, he said he didn’t understand why they had such little value for the MHS JROTC program. “We always helped at registration, and at football games we didn’t just present the colors. We helped with the set-up and the take-down and cleaned up the trash. We represented our school well wherever we were asked to assist.”
The first-generation American, who is 21 and a radar operator, said that when he ends his military service, he can work as an air traffic controller or in radar repair, testing, or installation.
“I also think about studying criminal justice and law enforcement as a career,” he said.
Medellin said one of the highlights of being in JROTC was attending the military ball. “Not just because I was named a king of the ball, but because it was a happy night of laughing and dancing with good friends, and knowing we had been prepared to go into the world.”
JULIIO ESTEBAN ORTIZ
Julio Esteban Ortiz, former JROTC commander, is a 2020 MHS graduate looking ahead at a military career and looking back at the failure of LISD administration and trustees to keep their word to build an obstacle course.
“We heard it multiple times over the years, the promise of a course on a piece of land at Martin High, and they used it for something else. It’s really unfair. Every other organization on this campus, even the band, has the opportunity and all the equipment it needs to get better at how it performs. We trained in the dirt in all four corners of Martin High, and made the best with what we had,” Ortiz said.
“The parents and families of band members and football players can see their kids perform at local games. We have to travel to compete, and many of our parents can’t make the trip,” he said.
Ortiz said the years he trained as a JROTC cadet made him more self-confident and gave him tools and perspectives for problem solving. “I learned what I am willing to sacrifice for what I really want in life, and I made friendships for life,” he said, crediting instructor 1SG. Jorge Martinez for invaluable lessons.
He said he looks forward to work in the Army as an infantryman in supply chain and battle preparedness. He contemplates college studies in criminal justice and/or psychology for an after-military career in the FBI or law enforcement.
MARIO GONZALEZ
Sgt. Mario Gonzalez, a 2015 graduate of MHS and its four-year JROTC program, is stationed at Alaska’s JBER, the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. The 22-year-old Army paratrooper and parachute rigger turned 18 during basic training at Ft. Jackson, SC. He attended airborne school in Ft. Benning, GA and was stationed with the 82nd Airborne in Ft. Bragg, NC.
“Our instructors in Laredo were experienced and knew their stuff. 1SG Jorge Martinez was an inspiring mentor. One of his goals was for us to become better citizens. He taught us everything from having self-respect to being punctual and how to wear our uniform with pride,” Gonzalez said.
“A parachute rigger holds in his hands the life of the next person to wear it. I take that very seriously. I’m considered a young sergeant, and I take pride in mentoring the soldiers under my command and keeping up with their training. The Army has been good to me,” he concluded.
DANGELO HERNANDEZ
“The core values I learned in four years of JROTC will benefit me the rest of my life,” said Dangelo Hernandez, a 2015 MHS graduate. “I learned how to communicate, how to speak for myself, and how to be respectful to others. I learned self discipline and self respect,” he said of his experience as a cadet.
“I was a squad leader, a commander, and an officer, and though I wanted to enlist, I did not meet the physical requirements,” he recalled.
“That was a disappointment, but my education in JROTC was key to completing a college degree in computer science at TAMU-Kingsville,” he said, adding that he would like to join the faculty at Martin High.
CRISANTEMA TOBIAS
Crisantema Tobias, a 2018 MHS graduate and a JROTC alum, called from the U.S. Army base in Baumholder, Germany where she is stationed.
“We shouldn’t have had to be asking, almost begging, for the obstacle course. It was something we needed and never got,” she said, adding that JROTC motivated her to focus to learn, to speak up, to grow, and to be a leader.
“I never had a goal or a plan for my life. JROTC made me a better student and gave my life discipline. If my grades weren’t good, I would not have been able to compete. The instructors who guided us gave me the idea that I could work as an educated professional. They were also good, kind people. 1SG. Jorge Martinez lived in Zapata but came in early enough to make sure that anyone who didn’t have a car got to the campus in time to board the van to the Raider competitions,” SPC. Tobias said.
She said she will likely re-enlist for another four-year contract. She is about to start college classes online. “I feel lucky that I have the means to help my family back home,” she said.
OVER AND OUT: PARENT ADAN BEARD’S VIEW
Adan Beard, the father of Cadet Bayron Rubio, wrote (paraphrased from Spanish):
“I am very disillusioned with the LISD board for giving priority to the Border Olympics and athletics when my sons (in ROTC) need an obstacle course at Martin High School that would benefit all LISD students.
“Why did the board give priority to constructing four long jump areas, a discus throw area, and a shot put area for the Border Olympics over the necessity of an obstacle course at Martin High?
“Why are you using our LISD tax dollars to benefit out of town universities and colleges when that money should be used for LISD students?
“You are discriminating against the football programs of Christen Middle School and the MHS Tigers. This is not just (justo) because we are a poor neighborhood.
“The ROTC is the only option for a paid college education for those who enlist in the military. They can become doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, or pilots in the military.
“We as ROTC parents should have been part of the LISD discussions and meetings. You have not invited us to the process.”
SATURDAY’S PEACEFUL PROTEST
BATTALLION CMDR. JULIO ORTIZ
