The Defense Department’s school system for military-connected children is undergoing a reorganization that is designed to increase support for those children, officials said.
The changes include adding administrative officers to nearly every school and increasing the number of school psychologists. It also includes eliminating some positions, but it’s not clear yet how many people will be moving to other positions or leaving the school system by the beginning of the next school year.
Classroom teaching positions remain unaffected, said Jessica Tackaberry, a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense Education Activity.
“Core services and teacher-to-student ratios remain unchanged, ensuring continuity, stability, and high-quality learning environments” across Department of Defense Education Activity Schools, according to a DODEA announcement.
The changes are “in direct support of the Department of Defense’s Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative,” according to officials. That initiative required agencies to submit proposals for potential ways to reduce or eliminate redundant or non-essential functions and include adjusted civilian manpower levels.
“This is not change for the sake of change. It’s targeted, strategic, and rooted in our mission to support military-connected students,” said DODEA Director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, in the announcement. “We are transforming our workforce to meet the future head-on, while preserving the academic excellence that our families depend on.”
DODEA officials said they aim to strengthen school-level leadership structures, ensure smoother student transitions between schools and invest in professional development for educators.
The Federal Education Association, the union representing DODEA faculty and staff, has “big, big, big concerns about this,” said Richard Tarr, executive director of the FEA.
Tarr questioned the changes, citing the school system’s accomplishments. For example, military school students led the nation last year in 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores.
“In general, this reduces the number of people serving the students in the school, but those duties don’t go away,” he said. “They’re distributing the duties among other people who are already overworked and have their own full-time positions.
“Teachers’ working conditions are the students’ learning conditions.”
FEA has asked DODEA for more information and has made proposals “to alleviate the harm” but hasn’t gotten answers, Tarr said.
DODEA hasn’t included FEA in discussions around these changes, he said, following President Donald Trump’s executive order March 27 excluding certain federal workers from the right to collective bargaining. The union has filed a lawsuit challenging that order.
Last November, DODEA invited parents, students, educators and leaders to participate in a systemwide questionnaire on Future Ready Learners, and the results shaped many of these decisions, officials said.
DODEA operates 161 accredited schools in 11 foreign countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico, including the DODEA Virtual School. There are nearly 900,000 military school-age children, and of those, about 65,000 attend DODEA schools.
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The changes outlined include adding 21.5 psychologist positions across the school system, lowering the psychologist-to-students ratio from one for every 900 students to one for every 700.
The national ratio for the 2023-2024 school year was one school psychologist per 1,065 students, according to the National Association of School Psychologists, which recommends one psychologist per 500 children.
DODEA also plans to transition school education technologist positions to district-level instructional systems specialists. Tarr said this change is cause for concern because these technologists not only help keep students’ laptops running, but also work with educators to make sure they can use the technology embedded in the curriculum.
In response to this concern, DODEA spokeswoman Tackaberry said, “Schools also have IT personnel that support the school for any technology issues, and have other staff capable of handling school automation needs.”
The plan also calls for phasing out or significantly changing special education assessor positions and speech-language pathologist assessor positions.
Tarr said FEA is disappointed that these positions are being eliminated. However, Tackaberry said assessments will continue with speech-language pathologists, who will also participate in eligibility and Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings.
School psychologists will continue to administer cognitive and behavioral assessments and participate in eligibility and IEP meetings, Tackaberry said. This will allow school psychologists to serve as the primary coordinators for all special education evaluations.
“This change is aimed at improving early intervention and more individualized support for students,” Tackaberry said.
Another change will add administrative officers at nearly every school “to streamline operations and free principals to focus on instructional leadership,” according to officials.
Currently, DODEA has some administrative officers, but they serve multiple schools. They perform a wide range of tasks, Tackaberry said, including managing office operations, budgets, personnel and records and providing support to administrators and staff.
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Another step in the plan is to phase out or significantly change office automation assistant and office automation clerk positions, as well as numerous positions above the school level.
About 88% of DODEA’s workforce is at the school level, while 12% serve above the school level in districts, regions or headquarters offices. About one-third of the cuts in positions are happening at above-school levels. The numbers of those cuts, as well as the other two-thirds of the changes at the school level, have not yet been confirmed, Tackaberry said.
“While the transformation is not focused on broad workforce reductions, it does include the careful elimination or reallocation of certain roles to improve efficiency, reduce duplication and strengthen support systems at all levels within DODEA,” Tackaberry said.
The changes affect a number of instructional systems specialist positions and some operations-focused positions at the district and region levels, she said.
Nearly every headquarters department was affected, including logistics, procurement, equal employment opportunity programs, curriculum and instruction, professional learning, general counsel, security management, facilities and others, Tackaberry said.
“The exact number of eliminated positions is still being finalized, as efforts are ongoing to reassign impacted staff into roles that match their skills, experience, and certifications,” she said.
Without knowing which positions are being affected, it’s difficult to know what effects this might have on children’s education, said Eileen Huck, acting director of government relations for the National Military Family Association.
“Any time there are changes at the school level, parents are understandably concerned, especially in the current environment where we know so many federal civilian employees have lost their jobs,” she said.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book “A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families.” She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
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