BUDA — Seven years after Johnson High School’s opening, students will now have access to a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) class.
According to JHS principal Robert Hensarling, the school has been on a waiting list for the program since opening, with the initial construction including a range and a classroom made for the curriculum. While Lehman and Hays high schools house the Navy and Marine Corps programs, respectively, Johnson will host the Air Force branch.
“You don’t want too many of the same branch. The military has some guidelines in terms of the distance between different programs and my understanding is you can’t have two of the same program in the same district,” explained Hensarling. “Air Force made great sense because of the aerospace engineering program that the campus [has] … We’re the only campus that offers that program study, with the intent that it would coexist with the Air Force JROTC once we had it approved because there’s some carryover between things, like learning to fly aeronautics.”
