Army planners are hoping a new law dramatically expanding who can teach high school students in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or JROTC, can dig the program out of a significant instructor shortage.
The program has hundreds of vacancies, but Congress has set a new policy reducing the number of years of service needed by instructors — from 20 years down to eight. The Army, which has the largest JROTC footprint, slightly tweaked that threshold up to 10 years of service and requires at least a rank of staff sergeant, captain or warrant officer 1. But six months after that law was passed, JROTC is still struggling to fill key instructor vacancies.
Under the previous requirement, instructors generally had to be 20-year retirees. That meant much of the instructor recruiting pool was part of an older demographic, often those who enjoy generous retirements and were perhaps less inclined to have full-time jobs.
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“We’ve been working this for a while; it’s all part of modernizing JROTC,” Col. Ken Jones, the director of Army JROTC, told Military.com. “This opens up the pool of potential instructors.”
The move also opens up opportunities for currently serving Guardsmen and reserve troops. Jones said both components could be a key source for new instructors because the part-time services are commonly stacked with…
