HOW MILITARY FAMILIES CAN PLAN FOR POST-PANDEMIC K12 EDUCATION
By CHRISTI HAM
Prayerfully, the most painful pandemic experiences are behind us and the U.S. can begin the long process of returning to some degree of normalcy.
For families with school-age children, mountains of issues are ahead. This is certainly true for all Americans, but military-connected children have an additional layer of issues to surmount -- beyond lost classroom time, distancing from friends, hibernating in quarters emptied because of packing due to Permanent Change of Station orders and uncertainty about when the release for the next duty station will occur.
Most children will eventually step back into their old habits, old classrooms or schools, neighborhoods, and friendships. For our military children, so many of them will step out of these challenging times right into the next batch of challenging times. They will re-enter education in different classrooms and in different schools, having moved to a new location. There will not be familiar faces to ease their concerns, as the communities will be new and foreign to them. And establishing new friendships will take time and opportunity.
Servicemembers who are parents are tallying up the impact of the pandemic combined with the typical trajectory of a military family that requires uprooting every two to three years to a new locale and a new school system.
They wonder if their children will be further behind than they might have been. How will the educational experiences of their children be weighed in this new post-pandemic grading regime? Are they moving into a district that is using distance learning technology that is unfamiliar to them? And will they feel comfortable asking and inquiring of faculty that they have never met or seen in person? Will their children be total strangers in a strange land where no one knows them?
On top of these questions, others have emerged that are specific to the disruption the pandemic has sparked for military children:
On grade placement… Will military children move forward in their academic careers or be forced to repeat their last grade, especially if they miss any summer school options or remedial offerings at a new site that they will not yet be enrolled in?
On missed testing… The pandemic has thrown a wrench into school testing. Without having test results, the military children now have no broad results to compare their skills to the many places they might be stationed in the future. They have no up to date "proof" of their skills, talents, and educational background.
On sports participation… For military children who participate in spring sports, where will they fit in, if at all, at the next athletic season in a year's time?
On honors society placements… How does the pandemic impact the ability of military students to be enrolled in National Honors Society programs? Will this group of students have to wait another year to be considered? And based on what definitive material?
On standards for coursework… How has the disrupted school year impacted the ability of military children to learn course material and master it in preparation for the next school district? Are they strong based on their efforts or weaker because they had no clear direction to assist them?
On the determination of course grades… Will each school district provide a clear explanation of how they determined the end-of-year grades for their students? This is vitally important because these children must carry forward the grades – and their rationale -- to a receiving district.
These questions highlight the importance of detailed planning for military families. As they grapple with the pandemic and its impact on K-12 education, military families can turn to two excellent resources to help them, both produced by Military Families for High Standards.
The first is “A Military Family’s Guide to School Transitions,” which walks military families through all the major education issues they will face in a move to a new duty station. It is available here. The second is our newest tool, “A Military Family’s Guide to the School Liaison Program,” which lays out for families the roles and limits of school liaisons. It explains how liaisons can help in the most effective ways. It is available here.
The pandemic introduced many Americans to the term “flattening the curve,” a statistical expression meaning to lower the number of incidence of something, in this case, virus infections. The two guides will help flatten the curve for military families when it comes to problems encountered during education transitions to a new locale. Taken together, they will minimize anxieties, efficiently assist in enrollment, and productively set these children on a strong pathway for continued success.