To be sure, many factors besides the condition of a building affect learning. Quality of teachers, for instance, or the availability of effective textbooks and technology can yield dramatic classroom results. But many educators say the mix of pressures unique to military children ¡ª crumbling schools, overcrowded classrooms, and absent parents who may not return ¡ª has a measurable effect on the feelings of students and on how well they do in school.
"There are so many needs," said Whitney Gee, a psychologist at three schools on Fort Riley. "I feel like I'm running around sticking a Band-Aid on everything."
Good teachers adapt to decrepit school conditions, said Fitzgerald, the DoDEA acting director. "But they do have an impact." While difficult to prove, Pentagon education officials have tried. As the backlog of substandard schoolhouses swelled in recent years, Russell Roberts, the agency's facilities chief, set out to establish what appeared to be a link between deterioration and academics. Some studies have suggested such a link. Yet in the end, said Roberts, "I couldn't say, 'This kid got an F because of dingy bathroom tiles.' "
Pentagon officials denied iWatch News requests for detailed school-by-school data that would have permitted a direct and more comprehensive assessment of the association between higher deployment rates, the condition of facilities and lower test scores. Without specific information about enrollment and lengths of deployments of parents at each school, it's hard to obtain a full, reliable picture. Yet even with such shortcomings, the iWatch News analysis of data it was able to obtain from 2008 showed a slight yet statistically significant adverse effect from deployment on test scores, especially on scores from the middle schools.
In a written response to questions from iWatch News, meanwhile, the Defense Department's education agency acknowledged "no doubt that deployments have an effect on every aspect of a child's life," including education.
Over the past decade, multiple deployments have become what Lindsay Ralston, Fort Sill's school liaison officer, terms "the new normal" ¡ª parents gone, on second, third, and fourth tours, for months at a time. Since the Iraq invasion, the Army alone has deployed 23,302 soldiers with children at least three times. That means at least one parent of the typical nine-year-old has been absent for half her life.
The military tends to refer to the "resiliency" of its children. "You have to become adaptable," noted the Defense Department's Gordon, who as a military child himself was shuttled between homes on multiple bases and continents during his father's Army postings to places such as Colorado, Virginia, Germany and Taiwan.
While children can learn to cope, the emotional trauma that they bear when their absent parents are in harm's way often plays itself out in the classroom. At Fort Stewart's Diamond Elementary, the school with the mold and cockroach infestations, Tina French has noticed her 12-year-old daughter, Victoria, picking fights during deployments. Her Army mechanic husband has done four stints in Iraq. Each time, Victoria, a sixth grader diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, has regressed at school, lashing out at classmates. "She's pushing boundaries because she's stressed," said French, who has found herself in the office for Victoria's discipline referrals.
Trenton LeForge, the 3-year-old son of an Army sergeant stationed at Fort Riley, has suffered separation anxiety since his father left for Iraq in November ¡ª the third deployment. Trenton refused to go to preschool at Fort Riley's Ware Elementary School. When his mother, Carri, dropped him off, Trenton would cling to her, screaming, "Are you going to Iraq, too?" By April, he had begun attending class with help from one of the 1,000 special counselors provided by the Defense Department to schools to support students with deployed parents ¡ª or one counselor for every 116 students.
Overcrowding at Ware Elementary leaves parents like LeForge worried that her sons' teachers cannot pay enough attention to their emotional needs ¡ª at a time when they require it the most. "It's already a high-stress situation when you have all these deployments," LeForge said. "The crowding is just a piling on of everything else we have to deal with."
Her oldest son, nine-year-old Trevor, misses his father in church on Sundays, the big black bible in his father's sturdy hands, and at Ware's overflowing school assemblies where he would applaud heartily whenever Trevor made top honor roll. At Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, N.C., J.W. Grabrysiak, 11, son of an Army electrician, yearns to fly kites again with his father in the backyard.
Sadee Songer, a precocious fifth grader at Fort Riley's Morris Hill, the school with the brown water, cannot recall how often her father has been away in the last 10 years ¨C it may have been three or four times. She remembers him attending only one birthday party, and trick-or-treating with him once."It makes me sad," she said.
Less than a year after returning from Iraq, Catie Hunter's father in January left for Korea ¡ª an unexpected tour just when Sgt. Bryan Hunter had decided to retire because of the many missed moments with his family. When Catie found out about his latest orders to deploy, she collapsed in tears.
Once, during her father's 2009 deployment to Iraq, he was supposed to come for a visit. The family dressed in red, white and blue, wearing beads and waving flags as troops filed through the gate at Dallas International Airport. Her father wasn't one of them. He had missed his flight. Catie hit the floor, sobbing.
Clingy since, Catie insists on sleeping in her parents' bed.
Multiple deployments can compound the impact of parental absences on academic achievement. A March 2011 study by the RAND Corporation for the Army found that children with parents deployed for at least 19 months had "modestly lower" test scores than their peers ¡ª regardless of gender or parent's rank. "Rather than developing resiliency," the study states, "children appear to struggle more with more cumulative months of deployment."
The study reinforced findings in an earlier RAND study , in 2009, which associated greater academic difficulties with longer deployments. And a 2010 study by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point found lengthy deployments had a modest negative effect on test scores of children enrolled in military schools, especially those in the lower grades. It also implied that children whose parents deploy for longer periods may fall permanently behind when they reach the higher grades, the researchers concluded in the study. Said Raezer, of the National Military Family Association , the advocacy group that commissioned the 2009 RAND study: "I believe some of these kids are the casualties of war."
Many teachers blame a perceived rise in behavioral issues on increasing deployments. Students have crawled under desks; come to class in pajamas; grabbed teachers in fits of rage. Data collected by some Defense Department schools support such anecdotes. This year, the system experienced an average 94 incidents at each school with high levels of deployment, compared with about 51 incidents at schools where relatively few students' have parents serving far away.
The toll has manifested itself in greater absenteeism, too, with students typically missing class before and after deployments. "How can we tell a mom, 'You can't take your kid to see grandma after dad's been gone for a year?'" posed Cheryl Serrano, of the Fountain-Fort Carson School District, which operates five schools on the Colorado Springs post. By February, her district had recorded 1,700 students ¡ª 23 percent ¡ª absent at least 10 percent of school days. Educators at Defense Department schools say some students skip 50, 60, or even 70 days a year.
At specific schools, principals said the impact on academic performance is unmistakable. Vern Steffens, who heads Fort Riley's Jefferson Elementary School, which already has a "poor" rating for its deterioration, said he worried about low test scores as well. He noted that as the proportion of students with a deployed parent rose over the last two years,Customized imprinted and
promotional usb flash drives. from 23 percent to 41 percent, reading test proficiency rates plummeted 23 percentage points.
Because of that drop, in 2010, Jefferson did not make what's known as "adequate yearly progress," a measurement of how well schools are meeting standards required under the No Child Left Behind Act. At the time of state testing, 2,800 soldiers in the post's Combat Aviation Brigade were in the process of deploying ¡ª including 175 parents at a school with 349 students.This page list
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"They were focused on their dads leaving," said Steffens, not on tests.
Swelling numbers, crowded classrooms
Deterioration and deployments are hardly the only afflictions at Jefferson, one of six schools on Fort Riley, a sprawling post in the Flint Hills, that majestic part of Kansas known for its tallgrass prairies. Military consolidation and war have led to an explosion in growth at the fort, with added Army units from shuttered bases ¡ª 18,000 soldiers in all.
Open fields have given way to rows of cookie-cutter houses strewn with American flags and WELCOME HOME, PAPA banners. The boom has put pressure on Fort Riley's outdated schools, officially rated as being in "poor" shape. In six years, enrollment has grown 25 percent ¡ª packing 2,741 students into buildings designed to hold 2,013. And still they come: Administrators anticipate another 400 by August. "We're just bulging at the seams," said Deb Gustafson, principal of Ware Elementary, where the LeForge boys go. In September, 702 students attended this school built for just 580. Within nine months, the number topped 800.
Overcrowding has made for large class sizes ¡ª around 30 students, compared to the typical 20 students per class in the nation's public elementary schools overall, according to Education Department data. Fort Riley's Morris Hill Elementary has even had 35 fifth graders and their desks crammed into a classroom of 850 square feet ¡ª about the size of a small city apartment.
Educators have improvised new classrooms from staff lounges, principals' offices, even supply closets. At Fort Riley Middle School, teachers travel from one class to the next, hauling carts of textbooks and laptops. Administrators at Custer Hill Elementary School have converted the stage in an auditorium into a classroom.Polycore
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Among the most crowded schools, Fort Riley Elementary, with an average student-teacher ratio of 28-to-one, sits atop a hill overlooking the historic main post. Inside, corridors are dotted with tiny desks and chairs, where students are tutored. Hallway vestibules, 3-by-5 feet, have become testing areas for students, like Paige Boland, now nine. Her mother, Tracy, remembers walking into school nearly three years ago, and spotting Paige, then a first grader, kneeling on the floor, reading aloud to her teacher in one of those vestibules. Her teacher, Boland learned, had nowhere else to go.
As a school support monitor, Boland, who assists teachers with student discipline, once had an office, replete with pillows, where she could help kids deal with what she calls "their moments." This year, she has aided students wherever she could ¡ª the gym, the principal's office. One fifth grader recently broke down in tears in class because her mother was injured in Iraq. Boland spent an hour with the girl, leading her from room to room, seeking a private space to calm her down.
For students, the overcrowding can feel overwhelming. They bump into classmates; they get distracted. "I feel like I haven't learned anything all year," said Sadee Songer, the fifth grader at Fort Riley's Morris Hill, because so many students are competing for attention. Her class had as many as 35 kids. Songer complains of having to do busy work rather than lessons that challenge her. "The teacher doesn't give a lot of attention," she said.
Overcrowding leads to other constraints in education, too. Teacher Megan Stucky has calculated that, during a six-hour school day, she devotes just 11 minutes, uninterrupted, to each of her 26 kindergarteners. Her colleague, Kimberly Dressman, cannot ask her first graders to read stories aloud now that her reading group consists of 22. And Jolynn Henry cannot keep up with her second graders' soccer games and birthday parties since having an average 30 students in her class ¡ª the largest in her 26-year career.
Schoolhouse strains have begun showing in some metrics of performance ¡ª and not just at Jefferson. In a letter to the local school board, Greg Lumb, principal of Morris Hill, noted that, from 2008 to 2010, the post's elementary schools have added 298 total students ¡ª up 17 percent ¡ª and only four total classrooms, while their "standard of excellence" awards for students who score in the highest percentiles in reading and math on state tests have dropped ¡ª from 114 to 79.
Becky Lay, principal of Fort Riley Elementary, worries about the nine percentage-point decline in her school's scores. Already, she and fellow administrators are gearing up for hundreds more soldiers and their families next year. "At times," she said, "I wonder, 'How much longer can we hold on before we break?' "
'Scary' conditions and temporary fixes
Emblematic of the challenges and consequences are the military's two older schools on Fort Stewart, an artillery post an hour south of Savannah, Georgia, speckled with lush pines. From the outside, they look tidy, clean and their ceiling tiles gleam. But what lurks beneath their surface is what Tim James, the former operations chief overseeing maintenance at the schools, finds "unbearable." At Diamond Elementary, leaks from its rotting roof have caused lights in classroom G3 to spark ¡ª "a serious safety hazard," according to an Aug. 24, 2010, inspection report ¡ª forcing administrators to evacuate the classroom. Buckets, some of them 55 gallons, routinely collect rain.
Documents obtained by iWatchNews peg the roof leaks as the top culprit for vexing indoor air-quality problems, compounded by antiquated ventilation units. Teachers have complained about a host of health issues including sinus flare ups and allergic reactions. Connie McCurtis, a special education teacher, says she never suffered such severe respiratory woes until coming to Diamond five years ago. In December she left. Meanwhile, administrators acknowledge having to move some teachers from classrooms or transferring them altogether.
"The conditions scare me," said Michelle Sherman, whose two sons, ages 6 and 4, attend Diamond. She attributes her kindergartner's two bouts of pneumonia to conditions at the school. Her preschooler's teacher filed a complaint about "black stuff" blowing from vents; ceiling tiles "turning gray to black"; and "damp and musky" odors, internal emails show. Cockroaches are regularly spotted on walls, electrical plugs and cafeteria tables.
Administrators are scrambling for temporary fixes. In February 2010, the Defense Department paid for a year-long, $110,000 study on the school's air quality, conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers. Meanwhile, documents show, inspectors noted "visual signs of mold" in the library and "high counts of mold spores" in two classrooms. Remedies include new "air handlers," and anticipated patching of the roof ¡ª a major job. Administrators are considering "simple alterations" to the ventilation system to address elevated carbon dioxide levels.
"All we're doing is putting Band-Aids on the problems," acknowledged Robert Heffley, who manages school facilities at Fort Stewart. The 1955 Diamond schoolhouse is not slated for replacement until 2015.
Brittin Elementary School, two miles away, has the distinction of being the only Defense Department school shut down because of poor air quality. After years of problems and complaints, administrators in 2002 moved its population into trailers while replacing its ventilation system ¡ª a multimillion-dollar expense. Some teachers say mold has since returned, sickening staff and pupils. An April 2006 indoor air-quality inspection shows teachers have reported everything from "burning hands and numb tongues" to "students sneezing." The report found dirty air filters, "prone to mold growth," and "elevated carbon dioxide levels" signifying "poor ventilation."
The Pentagon's education agency, in a written response to iWatch News, said "the claim that Band-Aid fixes were made is inaccurate," and noted that architects, engineers, industrial hygienists and microbiologists all had visited Brittin and helped devise remedies.
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Parents and teachers at several schools described building issues that languish for months; sometimes, they say, it takes a visit by an outsider ¡ª a VIP or a reporter ¡ª to fix things. During a reporter's April visit for this story, custodians were replacing water fountains at Brittin that, teachers say, had been busted for four years.
Some parents are willing to overlook troubles at the military's schools in expectation of a coming replacement ¡ª or in hopes of a transfer. Educators at Rota High School, on Naval Station Rota, in Spain, liken their new, $23 million building to "paradise" ¡ª a welcome substitute for the 1958 facility shuttered last fall. The Army has funded construction of some swanky, state-of-the-art schools on its posts, including one at Fort Stewart that features wide open halls, spacious classrooms, computer labs with built-in fixtures, and a massive gym.
At Murray Elementary School, on Fort Bragg, custodians sealed the roof after rainwater poured into the gym, spurring health complaints and air tests . Seven miles away, at Irwin Intermediate School, air units fail about once a month, leaving students hot or bitterly cold. But with a new school under construction, parents and teachers said they can overlook the obvious dilapidation. "It wasn't anything I hadn't seen before," said Mimi Claftin, whose fifth-grade son attends Irwin. She and others say they are willing to sacrifice on physical defects because of caring educators, diverse programming and modern technology.
