Deployment, anxiety, and hard work are constant factors in this Texas district.
“You know what’s hard about being the new kid at school?” asks Gail Siller, superintendent of Fort Sam Houston Independent School District (FSHISD). “Not knowing where to sit at lunch.”
Siller’s district serves children of active military personnel currently stationed at Fort Sam Houston, an Army installation in San Antonio, Texas. Each year, there is a 35 percent student turnover. “All of our PreK–12 students are military kids, and this means that they are moving in and out of the district throughout the year,” Siller explains. “Our district has to serve our students’ social and emotional needs so they can get on with the business of learning.” Her district has learned how to best take care of a mobile population, from accepting out-of-state class credits to keeping an open roster for sports clubs and extracurricular activities.
The district is comprised of three campuses, which serve a total of 1,300 students. While most students live on the installation, others live outside the district boundaries but have a parent who is assigned to base. Fort Sam has earned high ratings in Texas’s public school accountability system and made Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind. More than 94 percent of its students achieved mastery in English and writing on the 2008–09 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, while 84 percent showed mastery in math and science. Both marks are above state averages.
The Only Constant Is Change
“One year, we tried to figure out how long our 70 high school seniors had been in our district,” says Roland Rios, the district’s instructional technology coordinator and the former principal of Cole middle and high schools. “Only nine had been here since their freshman year, and just three had been in our schools since sixth grade,” he recalls. “Because we have such a high turnover, we need to be creative and flexible in our approach.”
Like many other states, Texas is currently working to institute electronic files for student records. However, since both records management and graduation requirements can vary widely by state and district, FSHISD works to ensure students are placed in appropriate classes and can pass the Texas graduation exam. “We’re not going to refuse a child because they show up with the wrong stuff,” Rios notes. “We’re going to work with them and their families to ensure they can have a successful experience here. The recent Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children that’s now used in 21 states helps us do that.”
One family with three children had moved 16 times in 17 years, says high school counselor Becky Ownby Smith. These students had already taken multiple state history courses and numerous state exit exams. The two seniors ended up going to summer school and taking extra courses this year so they could graduate with a Texas diploma, she says.
But making sure students’ academic needs are met is only part of the battle. “We want all new students to feel like they’re a part of the community. To accomplish that, we use the Student 2 Student Initiative created by the Military Child Education Coalition,” Siller says. “With S2S, our current students reach out to newcomers. Not only are new students welcome at the lunch table, but they also learn from their peers about the San Antonio area, sports and extracurricular options at our school, and popular trends and activities.”
Since students enter Fort Sam throughout the year, the schools’ sports teams and clubs welcome new members at any point. “If we just had tryouts once a year for a team, that would mean many of our new students simply couldn’t participate,” Siller explains. “We make sure all teams and after-school activities are always open to taking on new people.”
Embracing Tech Tools
Approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of the district’s students have a parent presently deployed overseas, either in combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, or in Asia or Europe. “We did an analysis of our district’s website, and most of our visitors are in the U.S., followed by Germany and Iraq,” Siller says. Given that, the district’s teachers and administrators have worked to make the website accessible and informative.
“We use eChalk, which allows parents to access students’ webpages, find teachers’ contact information, keep track of assignments, and look at students’ grades,” Rios explains. “Parents can access this information no matter where they are in the world.” The secure site also allows students to upload assignments, maintain their own e-mail addresses, and have online class discussions. “This electronic learning environment is valuable for our parents and our students,” Siller adds.
Since deployment may coincide with important milestones in their children’s lives, parents can use the website to look at slideshows of sports and other activities and even watch a live feed of the graduation ceremony. Christina Bertran, a Fort Sam graduate and a second-year English teacher in the district, says none of this was available when she was a student. “After 9/11, my dad was deployed overseas. I talked to him on the phone once a week at most,” she recalls. “But now, I may have a student get a text in the middle of class. It’s from his dad in Iraq reminding him that he has an English test this Friday.”
Dealing With Deployment
at the elementary level, fshisd offers support groups for children whose parents are currently deployed. “Because teens may not be comfortable in that kind of setting,” Siller says, “we have a school clinic that’s run by a physician [who specializes in adolescent medicine]. We want to make sure our students always have the opportunity to talk to someone in a safe environment to get support, both for themselves and their families.”
The Brooke Army Medical Center is on Fort Sam Houston, and many students come to the base because their parents have been wounded…
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