"A Safe Place at School"

Despite all the efforts to create positive educational opportunities for military children, by streamlining their moves between schools and providing a supportive, high quality education in those schools, an increasing number of military spouses and servicemembers worry about their children’s education in civilian schools, Jeff Schogol reports in his Stars and Stripes article, “Kids’ education a growing concern for mil families.”

Blue Star Families, a non-profit group for military families conducted surveys in 2009 and 2010 to determine the key issues facing military families. As I reported earlier in this blog, the percentage of respondents who listed their children’s education as their top concern rose from 3 to 12 percent. Put another way, for more than one in ten respondents, this was a greater concern than long deployments, pay and benefits, or anything else.

One big worry is having to attend a new school with every change of station, the executive summary said. “Moving from state to state, school to school causes huge gaps in the education process,” one person who responded to the survey wrote. “Every state has its own standards and requirements for graduation. Many children have to change classes and even take extra classes to meet all the requirements to graduate on time or spend 5-6 years in high school.”

I’ve reported here about a coordinated effort between 37 states to standardize course placement, records transfer, and graduation requirements for children in military families, but that won’t be enough if the schools themselves do not meet children’s needs. The survey also found that one in three (34 percent) of respondents had little or no confidence that civilian schools were responsive to the needs of military families.

“My children attend public schools and do not have peers, teacher, administrators or counselors who can even fathom the life of a military child,” one person wrote. As a result, my child does not have a safe place at school to express her feelings of sadness, and anger.”

“It is one thing to move a child from a school in Texas to a school in Kentucky. It is another thing to have to change schools multiple times in Kentucky because of housing issues on and off post,” another wrote. “Post schools should be available for families living off post who are on the waiting list for on post housing, so that the children do not have to be uprooted when housing becomes available.” This certainly seems easy enough to accomplish.

“I worry about gaps in their education, changing schools and not ever picking up exactly where they left off,” another commented. “I worry about them feeling anonymous when they move to a new school and feel like they aren't part of the community.”

“Their teachers had no idea what a deployment really meant and how deep a concern it would be for older children who do understand the dangers of said deployment,” another said. “The teachers would tell them to 'get over it' and that instead of being worried, that they should feel proud.” Instead of being worried? Military children are entitled to feel legitimately both.

It sounds as if despite a lot of effort, there is still a long way to go before children, who “serve too,” don’t pay an unnecessarily high price for their parents’ decision to serve our country.