TAMPA, Fla. — With a new school year underway, the JROTC program at Plant High School in Tampa is at risk of shutting down because of low enrollment.
It’s why students, Danielle Donis, Sean Murphy and Logan Kaczynski are hoping to turn that around. They say the program teaches life skills and has given them opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise.
“It gave me a great community to start off my freshman year with,” Donis, the operations commander for the group, said.
“It's just great. The growth that I've had through the program,” Kaczynski, the group’s vice commander, added.
Murphy, the group commander, said the program has helped shape their high school experiences.
Plant High School JROTC students
Major retired Bryan Carlson is the senior aerospace science instructor for the Plant High School program. Carlson spent 22 years in the military and explained how JROTC helps prepare students for the real world.
“I oversee the program, but they do everything else. They have staff meetings, planning meetings. They do a budget. They make goals. It’s literally a leadership laboratory," he said.
The program needs 100 members for it to stay open. At the start of the school year, they had more than 80 students. Despite the gap in numbers, the cadets say numbers don’t quantify the experiences and life lessons they’ve learned.
This summer all three 17-year-olds got their private pilot’s license, thanks to a Flight Academy Scholarship.
“It was pretty inspiring,” Murphy said. “It definitely confirmed my path in life.”
“It was a little nerve-wracking, but it was so much fun. It was exciting and a lot of hard work to get there," Donis added.
The students say none of this would have been possible without the program.
“I'm hoping to go into the Air Force and then fly like fighter jets or bombers or something like that, and then after that, maybe retiring, go commercial,” Kaczynski said.
Major Carlson says it’s quite an accomplishment.
“Having three cadets getting their pilot’s license is big. It’s the most in our school’s history since the program began," he said.
Now as they kick off their senior year, they’re hoping to gain more recruits with a goal of helping others navigate high school. They say the program creates citizens of character and memories to last a lifetime.
“It was one of the best decisions I've made,” Donis said. "Everything that we do is just special in its own way.”
“Whenever you need somebody, they really are there for you. It's great to have a big family at school,” Murphy added.
JROTC is an elective. The goal is to get the enrollment numbers up by October. While the program is not military recruitment, cadets who choose to be part of the military after being part of the JROTC program would get a pay grade increase.