ARLINGTON, Va. — Children of fallen troops can continue attending Defense Department schools in the United States all the way through high school, the Department of Defense Education Activity announced Thursday evening.

Under the old policy, children of the fallen could remain in Domestic Dependent Elementary and Secondary Schools until the transition from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school, according to a DODEA news release.

The move allows 13 families to decide whether they want their children to remain in DOD schools, said DODEA Director Shirley Miles.

“We are involved – of course – with families, and DODEA is more than just their academic achievement; it really is about the whole child and the assistance that we can give to their families,” she said.

The new policy does not affect children in Department of Defense Dependents Schools, who move back to the United States after the loss of a loved one, said DODEA spokeswoman Connie Gillette.

“This policy is put in place to try to ease the difficulty of the family losing their loved one, and what we’re trying to do is lessen the transitions that are going to happen, but if a child is transitioning from Europe to the States, they’re already transitioning out of their school, so this wouldn’t really help them,” Gillette said.

If the spouse of a fallen servicemembers can stay overseas per the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement, his or her children can continue to attend DODDS schools tuition-free on a “space-available basis,” Miles said.

“There’s always space available for them,” she added.

DODEA has been working for about a year on the issue of allowing children to continue to attend DOD schools, Miles said.

“After reflecting and getting input from some of the families and listening to the commands, I felt that that we needed to re-evaluate the current policy,” she said.

The issue made news in October, after the widow of a fallen soldier told Defense Secretary Robert Gates that her children needed to be granted a waiver each year to continue to attend schools on Fort Campbell, Ky.

“There’s nothing in stone; there’s nothing promising me to tell my children that they’re not gonna – that I don’t have to beg and ask for them to ask to go to the school next year,” said Dana Lamberson, whose husband, Sgt. 1st Class Randall L. Lamberson, died in Iraq in 2006.

Lamberson spoke at “Wounded Warrior Family Summit” at the Pentagon, an October gathering of wounded servicemembers, their families and families of the fallen. She told Gates that safeguards needed to be in place to guarantee that children of fallen troops can continue to attend DOD schools through high school.

“Fix it,” she told Gates bluntly.

“Your voice has been heard,” Gates replied.

Later that month, Gates told reporters he was going to push very hard to allow children of the fallen to stay in DOD schools instead of having to apply for waivers.

“That doesn’t sound right to me ... That’s a problem I think we ought to be able to fix — but we’ll see,” he said.