scooterbug44
SoWal Expert
An investigation by NEWSWEEK and the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatchNews found that tens of thousands of children of U.S. military personnel attend military-base schools that are falling apart from age and neglect, and have failed to meet the Defense Department’s own standards. The conditions at schools on military installations have worsened in the last decade even as the average soldier-parent endures an average of three deployments, each lasting up to 18 months.
The Pentagon acknowledges it has a significant problem, as nearly $4 billion in needed renovations and new construction at its schools have piled up during a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military officials’ own reports to Congress in 2008 and 2009 show as many as three quarters of base schools the Pentagon operates are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards for safety, quality, accessibility, and design.
The Pentagon now estimates it will take $3.7 billion and as many as seven years to renovate or rebuild most of its schools, a backlog that accumulated over the last decade as defense officials failed to press for the funds they needed in stretched military budgets.
Where military children go to school depends on circumstances often beyond families’ control. More than 500,000 children, the largest proportion, live off base and go to local schools in their urban or suburban communities, with classrooms that often have significantly more resources.
But families who live on military installations—either for economic, career, or security reasons—send their children to one of the 194 base schools operated by the Pentagon, mostly overseas, or the 159 base schools operated by local school districts in the U.S. Those students—about 150,000 in all—are more likely to attend schools nearing a half-century old and suffering from significant structural deficiencies.
To put that cost in perspective, the amount is about the same spent this year on drone aircraft, or half the cost of NASA’s Hubble telescope, which scans distant galaxies from Earth orbit. Essentially, fixing military schools is a small-ticket item in a country that spends $2 billion a week on the wars alone but is trying to trim that cost with President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/military-children-s-schools-in-disrepair.html
I know many public schools also face infrastructure issues for various reasons, but I find it ridiculous the military can't provide decent facilities for on-base schools OR find a decent solution considering the money they throw at everything else.
The Pentagon acknowledges it has a significant problem, as nearly $4 billion in needed renovations and new construction at its schools have piled up during a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military officials’ own reports to Congress in 2008 and 2009 show as many as three quarters of base schools the Pentagon operates are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards for safety, quality, accessibility, and design.
The Pentagon now estimates it will take $3.7 billion and as many as seven years to renovate or rebuild most of its schools, a backlog that accumulated over the last decade as defense officials failed to press for the funds they needed in stretched military budgets.
Where military children go to school depends on circumstances often beyond families’ control. More than 500,000 children, the largest proportion, live off base and go to local schools in their urban or suburban communities, with classrooms that often have significantly more resources.
But families who live on military installations—either for economic, career, or security reasons—send their children to one of the 194 base schools operated by the Pentagon, mostly overseas, or the 159 base schools operated by local school districts in the U.S. Those students—about 150,000 in all—are more likely to attend schools nearing a half-century old and suffering from significant structural deficiencies.
To put that cost in perspective, the amount is about the same spent this year on drone aircraft, or half the cost of NASA’s Hubble telescope, which scans distant galaxies from Earth orbit. Essentially, fixing military schools is a small-ticket item in a country that spends $2 billion a week on the wars alone but is trying to trim that cost with President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/military-children-s-schools-in-disrepair.html
I know many public schools also face infrastructure issues for various reasons, but I find it ridiculous the military can't provide decent facilities for on-base schools OR find a decent solution considering the money they throw at everything else.