Coburn and Closing Base Schools
According to Fox News, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. has a plan to close schools on military bases INSIDE the U.S. in an effort to save around $50,000 per student, per year.
Currently, the Pentagon operates nearly 200 on-base schools around the world. Sixty-three of them are in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
According to Coburn’s office, the Pentagon is spending an average of $51,000 per student per year to attend the U.S. schools on military bases. That figure is sure to rise as the Defense Department endeavors to repair the glut of schools that are in deteriorating conditions, though the military estimates the per-pupil cost is far lower than Coburn’s figures show.
Coburn has proposed shutting down the U.S. schools, and sending students to nearby schools in the local communities to get their education. In exchange, his amendment would allow the defense secretary to send up to $12,000 per student every year to the schools that take those students — in turn saving the government $1 billion over five years, according to Coburn.
The article goes on to describe dilapidated schools with bugs and inadequate heat. DoD argues that the cost of educating the students is much lower and has pledged to repair the buildings.
The plan Coburn lays out doesn’t seem outrageous to me, aside from if the schools are located in communities with failing school districts. School me. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a base school, and with the rudimentary search I did, I found that students who’s parent is at Great Lakes or Norfolk attend the local school district. So, what about this plan? To me, it sounds way better than slicing up retirement and medical.
Category: Military issues, Politics
I live outside of Fort Bliss and the schools located on base are run by El Paso ISD. When I was stationed at Fort Hood the schools were Killeen ISD. In fact every base I’ve been stationed at state side are run by the city the base is located in with the only exception being when I was overseas. Awhile back the Senator from Oklahoma wanted to raise Tri-Care fees for retired. It may look good on his paper but I think his math might be a little off. Just my two cents.
All I’ve got to say on the subject is that it generally behooves you to put children in like minded groups. Who else but army brats are going to understand what an army brat is going through
I’m actually kind of curious as to whether or not some of these DoD schools are on Guam. When I was there, the Guam public schools made inner-city shitholes seem like Harvard, and it got to the point that they had to build and open a DoD school right after I left.
The elementary and middle schools on Ft. Leavenworth are joint DODDS/Leavenworth schools. From what I understand, the quality of education on Ft. Leavenworth was superior to the schools in Leavenworth proper. Apparently the mix of federal prison guard kids and federal prisoner’s kids isn’t the optimal solution in the school system.
As a dependent who has attended both civilian and DoDDS schools, I’ll tell you…DoDDS schools kick-ass. Its true that the buildings may not be the best, but the education is a hell of a lot better than I’d posit 90% of the civilian public education system.
For example, my regular run-of-the-mill high school junior year Spanish III class was the same as Kent State U’s Honors Spanish I course. Same book & material, same curriculum. Very disheartening.
However, I’d rather they cut 200 schools rather than mess with veterans’ retirements and Tricare fees.
Our son was educated in DOD schools while we were overseas and in the civilian schools when we were stateside. During his 12 years of public schooling we were overseas for 8 of them. He received an excellent education.
I do not believe Sen Coburn’s figures are accurate at 50K per student. DOD schools didn’t have any sports programs when we were active and I believe the teachers were civil service. Does that expense come out of defense? If it is accurate, then that would be a good place to cut. I also believe the 12K a year should be given to the parents as school vouchers.
Moe, the problem is, say you’ve got a kid in Germany, Japan, etc. Are you going to send them to a local school where they don’t know the language or culture?
Or worse, what about places (like Guam) where there is outright hostility towards the military community and the education they dish out ain’t worth two shits?
Vouchers SOUND nice, but in this case, doesn’t work.
Personally, I would heavily disagree with Coburn. My wife was a teacher for 11 years before our twins were born. She taught in Killeen ISD when I was at Fort Hood. She has taught both on base and off. The military schools are 800% better than any of their public school counterparts.
I know it is poor etiquette, but I wrote about this yesterday on the blog I contribute to. The Reader’s Digest condensed version is, providing the DoD schools goes beyond merely being a school. It is a very important support group for dependents of military service members. And yeah based on personal experience the education is far better. My daughter attended schools at both Ft Hood and Ft Benning.
Shoot me I screwed up the link thingy. Try this. http://tinyurl.com/73g7rc8
Does anyone know the military’s policy (or the various branches’ policies) re. home schooling of dependants?
(Or if they even have polices? Perhaps they simply defer to the laws of the states in which various posts/bases are located.)
We got out 1983/84; no. 1 son was born 1988; so we started home schooling him ~ 1993/94.
Just curious … thx.
The only difficulty I can see in this is one that I witnessed in friends in the Navy. On-Base schools offer a same-grade curriculum. If you move in the middle of the year, you can go right back to school in the same grade level and at the same level of schooling. And, with the typical transfers and mix-ups, that is a necessity for students of military families.
On top of that, most schools on base offer good counseling to military brats who have a problem making and keeping friends. Without that, they tend toward acting out because it doesn’t matter, they’ll be gone before the next school year.
Rather than closing base schools, why not drag money away from the Department of Education? I mean, when an administrator at the Dept. of Ed. gets paid $300,000 a year for Janitorial Services and Educational Sanitation, things are getting out of hand. That’s six whole students right there, according to the Senator. How many others can be saved by cutting the dead weight from the Feds?
in the spirit of fairness and full disclosure, I ought to add, I, too, homeschool. I send some of my kids to public school now, but I’m a homeschooler through and through.
Both my kids (and I) are products of DODDS schools overseas and stateside, and my wife currently teaches at an on-post stateside DODDS section 6 school. Bottom line: Better school facility, better teachers, better discipline options (kid acts up too much, soldiers’ commander gets involved), etc. than the off-post options.
On-post schools are also a deciding factor for living on versus off-post while stationed here, and adding the new housing to that equation means the installation is a vibrant town of it’s own. Wish it had a junior high and high school, as well.
The DODDS schools here only go up to 6th grade on-post, then the kids transition off-post for junior high and high school, with the choice of any of three city school systems. Our kids consistently show up better-prepared than their counterparts who come up through city schools.
I spent most of my formative years as an Air Force brat living in San Antonio, TX and my views on this will be almost entirely informed by that experience.
People with money don’t seem to like to live near where the little people work. You don’t tend to see a lot of upscale communities near industrial complexes, business parks, or military installations. If the post you’re stationed at is in a city with more than one school district, chances are the district adjacent to the post will be funded by a tax base that can’t afford to live anywhere else. Adding an influx of students who may not fit in with the local demographics to what is quite possibly an already under-performing school district isn’t likely to work out well for anyone involved.
If the choice really is between closing the schools and cutting Tricare, I’d say close the schools. That said, I’d have to guess there are a lot of other places to cut fat before it comes to closing schools. Selling the golf course at Andrews and making Obama pay green fees at a private country club would be a good place to start.
Like Flagwaver said, why not drag the money from the Department of Ed? The dept serves no useful purpose, doesn’t educate anyone, but they do have an Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, and a “General Counsel” for the Dept of Ed. How much cash is being wasted on a department that seems to be all over the place, except for actually educating someone?
As a product of DODDS, and having had kids in DODDS, IMO this is a crapload of smoke that’s hiding a crapload of crap underneath.
DODDS schools in CONUS serve students who live in on-base housing. There may be exceptions, but these are rare. Most soldiers with families do not live on base due to shortages. The kids of these off-base-living servicemembers seem to be surviving. It’s not like anyone’s actually trying to ensure Little Johnny and Suzy can read, write, spell (OMFG!), or do math.
Either eliminate DODDS, or eliminate the money that is paid to each local school district for each child IN THE AREA (including kids who live on post and don’t go to off-post schools). That’s the crapload of crap: double payment for the same kid.
Y’all may have forgotten that the SecDef is Panetta, and he is on mission. The Army, in particular, sees warfighting as it’s #1 and Only Mission: to keep joes ready to fight, it will sacrifice everything else (including families). For the Marines – they get to pray that Big Navy remembers its Marine Corps when dollars get passed around.
So: eliminate DODDS or eliminate the double payments to the school districts or watch family quality of life take a swan dive off the cliff.
I work as staff in the “DDESS” system, which is the stateside of the two branches of DoDEA. The overseas branch is DoDDS. DDESS is a remnant of the “Jim Crow” days when the black students couldn’t attend local schools.
My statements reflect my own dam’fool opinion and do not in any way reflect policy or attitudes of the DoD, its principalities, powers, or high places.
First, DaveO is wrong in his belief of a ‘double tap’ for students. In reality, the local schools would be overjoyed to get the money and enrollment figures from the base children. They currently do not.
That being said, do you imagine that any soldier wants their children to be going to whatever the local civilian school system outside the gate? Perhaps Ft. Benning’s is located conveniently along Victory “VD” Drive?
@NHSparky – yes, DoDDS schools exist in Guam, and DDESS schools exist in Puerto Rico and Cuba as well.
@Eagle Keeper – DDESS allows resource use for home schoolers, as well as other educational activities. Surprisingly enough, this includes use of the facilities for Bible School – don’t tell the ACLU! Problem is, as you probably know, military families aren’t like civilian families; one parent may be deployed with significant impact on the group.
Have I witnessed enough incompetence, fraud, and waste in my time in DDESS to choke a stoat? Definitely. I would be completely unsurprised to find similar incompetence, fraud, and waste in any other educational venue. Are the teachers there massively overpaid. I believe so, but their salaries are keyed to that of the state they work in, and I have found out that the whole mysticism about underpaid teachers is nothing more than faith-based thinking.
@#18: I wonder how many places stateside are still run by the DoDEA? I know here at Fort Hood, all the schools, including the ones on post, are run by the Killeen ISD. When I was stationed in Hawaii from ’05-’08 the on post schools were run by the local ISD, not DoDDS. Believe me, I know all about DoDDs being an Army brat myself and graduating from a H.S. in Germany. I figured by now ALL of the stateside schools would fall under the local ISD’s. Which begs the question, how many post/bases actually still fall under this system? Might be alot lower than they are guessing at.
I retired here at Fort Hood last year, but I still remember having to fill out those forms every year stating that I am active duty so that the school district gets its money from the government (and since I am a homeowner they were getting money for my kids’ education from me as well). The only thing I do not know here at Fort Hood is who is paying for the physical buildings that are on post, think it may be a partnership between KISD and the post. The alternative of sending all on-post kids to schools off-post will never work here. Not enough schools off-post (unless you are planning of building a crap load of new schools), as well as the traffic jam of all the school buses both in the morning and afternoon. Its already bad enough as it is.
This Wiki looks like a good resource to start with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Education_Activity
I misspoke when I called my Wife’s school a DODDS Section-6. AS Jasmer said, it’s now part of the DDESS system of stateside schools.
Looks like they operate schools on 16 installations in the States and Puerto Rico and Cuba. Most of those installations have several schools.
@19: The answer to your question, straight from the horse’s mouth (the DoDEA website, dodea.edu, is, “DDESS operates 64 schools at stateside locations in 5 districts located in 7 states and 2 territories for eligible dependents of active duty and DoD civilians who reside on military installations.
DDESS Schools are located in: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Guam, and Puerto Rico.”
Money that is paid to local school districts is paid to compensate for the education they provide to DoD family members when the family does not pay property taxes because they live in government housing. Local school districts get nothing for family members who attend DDESS schools.
When DoD schools were available to us, they would always be my first choice and even influenced my decision to live on or off base. If they were available, I chose to live on base, always.
The schools exist to ensure that the children of military members had access to adequate, free primary and secondary education where ever they may be stationed, stateside or overseas.
I’m sure they may be able to make cuts in some areas, but I suspect that DoDEA is constantly assessing the need for stateside schools and adjusting as necessary. I know that in Beaufort, SC just a few years ago a middle school was opened on base where none existed before due to overcrowding of the local school district’s middle schools and lack of progress by the local school district in expanding capacity.
“How many post/bases actually still fall under this system?”. It isn’t surprising that, perhaps, the senator spoke without knowing what the system is. He probably had a staffer who came up with this idea, and Senator Coburn said, “brilliant”, and ran with it.
You’re probably right, UpNorth. We have congresspersons and their staffers come through our facility fairly regularly, and dealing with the staffers is an art…to ensure they don’t walk away with a partial understanding or stupid idea.
Considering that I’m deep behind enemy lines, so to speak, I don’t know that I really want to contact Sen. Coburn and provide some corrective measures.
There’s definitely improvements that could be made, and I bet that the outlandish figure of $51K/student is simply dividing DoDEA operating budget by number of students serviced.
Sen. Coburn’s cursory analysis does note something that was flagged the last time outsourcing DoDEA came up – the facility quality is poor. One reason not to turn the schools over to Dept. of Ed. was the supposed cost involved in bringing them up to snuff.
One thing that could be contemplated is elimination of the bureaucratic “stovepipe” mentality. The Department is essentially three massive school districts (CONUS+, Europe, and Pacific) topped by an equally massive Headquarters entity. There’s a cartload of high level GS workers plus the ‘educators’ when dealing with that sort of bureaucracy. I don’t exactly know what the main DoDEA HQ people do, since many of the requirements are already set by states. Of course, this didn’t help:
http://www.stripes.com/news/dodea-director-accused-of-abusing-authority-1.95526
Another alternative is “chartering” the schools, rather than simply throwing the kids willy-nilly into whatever the local system would bear. That would be greeted with screams of outrage, but it very well might generate the best bang for the buck.
I teach on base at Eglin Elementary (3rd and 4th split class) and we lead our district in reading scores and math. It’s run by the local school district and we are proud to support our military in any way we can. Facilities are actually “owned” by the local district but would revert to DOD should the school be closed. I love this job and am very thankful to be able to give back to those who give so much.
11 schools in 12 years…I attended majority of Catholic schools off post..but I did attend Faith Jr. (father was PTA president of Ft. Benning Schools) and MacArthur at Meade (Christmas transfer). You’re nuts closing DOD schools as it will not be THE answer to our money problems. Generally DOD teachers are paid more than their local school counterparts, and this brings in a higher caliber of teacher. On post schools offer more to the kid’s needs than off-post schools. Again… your nut to even try this “savings.”
Getting rid of the Bradley would be a good start.
Damn… I did not capitalize and space the word but in the previous post. Sisters Alda, Romaine, Gractia, Joyce, Mary-Margret, Mariannella (et al.) are spinning in their graves on that mistake!