Military Children Are Being Held Hostage

By bad schools and bad school systems.

In honor of National School Choice Week, I am writing about a subject very near and dear to my heart, military child education.

When it comes to the short end of the straw, military children get it time and time again--whether in times of war or peace. They move and start over every couple years in and out of public school systems who could give two bits less about them except for the federal moneys they bring with them. Mind you, these school systems are mostly located in areas whose ENTIRE ECONOMY is centered around the existence of that military base. Every year, these school systems receive extra funding for having active duty military attend their schools. Recently, due to the unignorable inadequacy of these military child holding pens masquerading as schools, the DOD has decided to give them even MORE money to the tune of $250M.

Here's the dirty little secret that every single military parent knows. It doesn't matter how much money you pour into those school systems, it still won't fix the problem. Because when it comes right down to it, money is not the problem: lack of control over our children's education is. They are giving this money to crappy local school districts [on top of the federal subsidy they receive per child of non-resident active duty attending their school] and the military members have ABSOLUTELY NO SAY in how that money is allocated. The local school boards are elected by local residents and they are usually entrenched local yokels who have little to no connection to the military. How about we create thresholds where for every 10% of military children attending a school district, they have to reserve one voting seat on their school board for an active duty military member either electable or appointed by the local base commander. Then we tie the federal subsidies to fulfillment of this threshold requirement. Most military members I know would jump at the chance to be civic leaders where they are stationed, but they face the common obstacle in that they are unknowns in the community.

Right now, 32% of all homeschooled children are military. That's insane. I have a lot of friends who homeschool for various reasons, but the biggest one being they can't afford private schools that are 1] better able to control the fluidity and quality of their children's education and 2] have the ability to better control the self-esteem sapping pitfall of constantly being a new kid or outsider. Then there are parents like myself who spend every bit of our tiny military expendable income on private school for our children. On an officer's income it's a stretch and just another sacrifice we make as part of serving our country, but on an enlisted income it's an impossibility. To me, that is just unconscionable. We have laid just one more burden on the military spouse to not only get by as a single parent deployment after deployment, but now they have the extra added burden of homeschooling their children because no reasonable sane person could send their children to local public schools.

A further solution to the problem military families face would be to give military families the federal subsidy check. Let them get their kids into local private schools and subsidize their tuition!! Where I live in CA, the base schools are run by the CA school system. The same CA school system who, as of 2007 was ranked 46th of all states. FORTY-SIXTH. It should be noted, however, that the average classroom teacher salary in CA is over $69K per annum only to be outspent by second ranked Massachusetts at $71K per annum. Obviously CA is doing something wrong here. The school district where I would be forced to send my children is ranked 574/766 of all the districts in the forty-sixth worst state for education. The best rated local elementary school is rated 946 in the state out of 5188. Most of the children attending that school are children of field grade and above officers. The other base option is number 4513/5188. See where I am going with this?

The aforementioned 946th ranked elementary school raises $80K in extra funds from the parents over the course of the year. Yet their kindergarten class has 40 kids to one teacher, no aide, and no special subjects like art, music, gym, or technology. Pathetic. The local Catholic schools raise less than that per year yet costs $4500/student to educate [as opposed to the $8700 per pupil in the public school district]. Their student to teacher ratio is 10:1 while the public school district claims to be 16:1. This is truly an outrage. Let's save some money, DOD, and subsidize private school tuition instead of crappy mismanaged leeching school districts. Give our military children and families a chance.