Last week the DOD quietly began a study to determine whether DoDEA schools in the continental United States should continue to operate.
Prepare for military parents everywhere to squarely place themselves in the stay or go category. This, my friends, is a fight that seems to know no compromise.
My children have never attended a DoDEA school. In North Carolina and Florida, we lived off-base and attended school locally. I personally never saw a problem with attending non-military schools. I have friends who never saw the point in attending anything but a DoD-run school.
When we PCS’d to Hawaii, our pre-move jitters included worries about attending local schools. Our email inbox was filled with rumored horror stories of the archaic curriculum, bullying of non-local kids and lax attitude that would create havoc on our kids’ academic careers.
Like most rumors, most of the horror stories we were told were just that, stories. While I am annoyed by how few hours the kids here attend school each day, just four hours on certain days of the week, I think the teachers and staff here are doing the best they can with what they have to work with – just like any local school.
When we arrived, the Army in Hawaii was in the process of conducting its own assessment: do military kids here need DoDEA schools? The final answer was no. It was cost prohibitive and the local schools could handle the job.
Still, parents demanded a recount and touted the benefits of military schools run by the military, for the military. Many of their arguments, seemed to me, to be dredged from the same rumors we heard before we arrived in the district.
Nationally, a 2003 study that examined the need for DoDEA schools stateside urged officials to dump a handful of some of the schools and send students out into the local school districts. Costs stopped any changes and the on-base schools continued to operate. Officials said this time students, teachers and parents will be contacted at random to participate in the study.
And if they call me, here is what I will say: according to officials, 85 percent of military kids already attend school off-base. Yes, PCSing is a pain and searching for a school adds just one more thing to our to-do list but really, what is the big deal? Any responsible parent should be researching their child’s new school regardless of whether it is DoDEA operated or not. If you are not happy with the school in your district, you have the option to move off base and rent elsewhere.
Yes, I know for some of you those are fighting words.
Military kids go through a lot: multiple PCS, deployments, war time injuries. Do they deserve a few perks? Yes. But what I also know through watching my own children and their friends is that children are resilient. Framed with the right attitude from parents, moving to a new school is a fun adventure with new challenges and new opportunities.
Finding the right house to rent in the right school district every time we PCS is going to be a pain. But part of being a parent is finding the school that is the right fit for your child. This is not the military’s job, it is ours.
And personally, with the current budget crisis and the need to shave several million dollars off the defense budget, I would prefer that those cuts be made to schools that only a small percentage of military children have access to, rather than after-school programs and special events that all military children can take advantage of.
The phone calls are coming. Decisions will be made. What will you tell them?
