Dec. 11, 2001 – The U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force still want you even if your high school loses its accreditation by the Middle States Association Commission on Secondary Schools.
Published reports have indicated that the U.S. Air Force might turn away would-be enlistees who graduated from unaccredited high schools. However, Air Force Staff Sgt. Cindy Cheek said that as long as students pass an entrance exam and a physical, the Air Force will take them. "A lot of them have already made provisions," she said of local high school seniors.
Steve Mathis, a local Navy counselor, said the Navy also accepts recruits without considering school accreditation, so long as they pass an aptitude test and physical exam.
Hector Rivera, Army education specialist for the San Juan recruiting office, said Army recruits must be high school graduates, but the schools do not have to be regionally accredited. "All public high schools are not accredited," he pointed out, adding that each branch of the military service has its own requirements.
The vast majority of Virgin Islands students who enlist after high school go into the Army, according to Ivanna Eudora Kean High School Principal Sinclair Wilkinson. "It's a tradition," he said, one that developed years ago when the Army was the only military branch with recruiting offices in the Virgin Islands.
While that has changed, Wilkinson said, students still seem inclined more toward the Army than to the other branches of service.
Sgt. Patrick Farrell said that in the St. Thomas-St. John district, about 75 youths enlist in the Army each year. Sgt. Renardo Bastian put the number at 40 to 50 for St. Croix. Cheek estimated that 30 to 50 from the territory join the Air Force. Mathis said the Navy signed up 70 people in the St. Thomas-St. John district last year; no figures could be obtained for St. Croix.
Wilkinson said the Army works hard at recruiting students by visiting the schools. And the V.I. Army National Guard assists by holding family events to introduce students to the Army.
The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools has announced it will remove its accreditation of the territory's three accredited public high schools — Central, Charlotte Amalie and Ivanna Eudora Kean — as of Dec. 31. The territory's fourth public high school, St. Croix's Educational Complex, which opened in the 1990s, has yet to seek accreditation.
