DOD’s school system and how it operates
By Sandra Jontz, Stars and
Stripes
Tafoya |
WASHINGTON — More than 50 years ago, the U.S. military
established its own school system to ensure that children of American servicemembers were
educated.
Today, that school system educates more than 100,000 students in the
United States and at U.S. military installations throughout Europe and Asia.
Both the stateside and the overseas school systems have been run
since 1994 by a parent organization called the Department of Defense Education Activity,
which is headquartered in Arlington, Va.
DODEA sets the curriculum, budget, student allocation and criteria
that administrators use in hiring employees. 
Though governed by the same parent organization, the overseas and
stateside schools do not share a common name.
Overseas, the system is referred to as the Department of Defense
Dependents Schools, which has students enrolled in schools on bases in Europe and Asia.
DODDS has 115 elementary, middle and high schools scattered
throughout Europe to educate an estimated 49,529 students for the 2001-02 school year. In
the Pacific, the number is expected to be 24,975 students.
In Germany, there are 27 schools in the Heidelberg district; 24 in
the Wurzburg district; and 15 in the Kaiserslautern district. There are 20 schools in the
Italy district, which includes Turkey and Spain; 16 in the United Kingdom district, which
includes Iceland; and 13 in the Brussels district.
In the Far East, DODDS runs 19 schools in Japan; 12 schools on
Okinawa; and eight schools in Korea.
The stateside, Guam and Cuba school districts are called the Defense
Dependents Elementary and Secondary Schools, or DDESS.
There is one school at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has a projected
enrollment of 391 students for the 2001-02 school year.
The stateside schools were founded primarily on military bases in
southern states because the military schools were established before public schools were
integrated. Today in the United States, military parents have the option of sending their
children to public schools within the local district or to the military-run schools on
base if one is available.
For the 2001-02 school year, DDESS officials anticipate 33,765
students.
DODEA estimates that it spent $9,838 per student last school year at
overseas schools, and $8,796 per student at stateside schools. The amount for overseas
students is more because of expenses such as living quarters allowance, travel and
permanent change of station fees that DODEA is responsible for paying.
The per-pupil amount that DODEA spends is slightly higher than the
national public school average of $8,177 per pupil, according the U.S. Department of
Education. The national figure is from the 1999-2000 school year, the last year for which
data is available.
DODEA operated both the stateside and overseas schools under an
annual budget of $1.3 billion last year, which was a 3 percent increase from the previous
year. Congress must approve the budget each fiscal year.
About 69 percent of the budget goes to pay the salaries of all of the
school systems’ employees, from director Joseph Tafoya to custodians and
receptionists. Of that, teachers’ pay consumes 81 percent.
As of March 1, the most recent data available, DODEA employed 8,801
people worldwide. Of that total, 6,180 made up the instructional staff in both Europe and
the Pacific.
The breakdown of the instructional staff was 74.6 percent female and
24.4 percent male. Minorities accounted for 12 percent of the instructional staff.
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