Schools with growing military populations offer more support for students

Support groups for students from military families are popping up more in the north country’s smaller school districts, where military populations are growing.

“It’s been one of the goals of this office to get groups up and growing more in the outer schools,” said Michele Carlton, one of Fort Drum’s school liaison officers. “It’s very important to be out there and that schools understand that military students may have different issues than other students.”

Large north country school districts that straddle Fort Drum — Carthage and Indian River — have student populations in which more than half come from military families. But a growing number of school districts in Jefferson County, and even Lewis County, have growing populations of military students and are beginning to offer support groups for students whose parents are deployed.

Barbara D. Kessler, project director for New York State Operation Military Kids, works with the Fort Drum school liaison officers to offer programs for students in some of the districts that are farther from post, but have growing numbers of military students. She has worked with schools in the Watertown City School District in the past. But this year, she also is working with South Jefferson, Sackets Harbor, Copenhagen and Lowville central school districts.

The groups are run differently depending on the school district and its needs, and they’re not always called deployment groups, because some include students who may not have a parent who is deployed, but are affected because the parent of a friend is deployed or some other reason. It’s with some of the outer schools, such as Sackets Harbor, South Jefferson and those in Lewis County, that Ms. Kessler comes into play more.

“Part of our goal with Operation Military Kids is to reach geographically dispersed areas,” Ms. Kessler said. “At some of the schools closer to the base, they go to school with classmates who understand. A lot of these kids aren’t necessarily interacting constantly with kids who understand. The idea is to have the kids come together and realize they’re not alone when they go through a deployment.”

It’s not just the students with a deployed parent who are affected, but their friends, too — another reason to add the program to other districts, Ms. Kessler said.

She recounted a story where she was working with a third-grade pupil who said she was mad at one of her friends because “her daddy was home and mine wasn’t,” she said.

“In some ways, it’s even more important to be in those areas,” Ms. Kessler said.

Fort Drum’s school liaison officers work with 19 school districts, including Gouverneur, some Lewis County districts and schools in Jefferson County, Ms. Carlton said.

Ms. Kessler meets monthly with groups of students in the participating school districts and addresses topics such as emotions, patriotism and the culture of the different branches of the military, she said.

The military student population at South Jefferson schools has been increasing slowly and steadily over the years, Assistant Superintendent Mary Beth Denny said.

As of the last school year, 14 percent of the district’s population was made up of students from military families. There have been small but consistent increases in that percentage for a while. The district was providing its own program through a counselor before, but as the population and participation began to grow, the district began to work with Fort Drum directly for a program to support students who had deployed parents, Ms. Denny said.

“This opens our eyes — we might not be dealing with 50 percent of our population, but it’s not 1 percent anymore either,” she said. “We’re at a level where we have to pay attention to how these kids come to school and get through the day when they may have a lot of other things on their minds.”

The district this year secured a Department of Defense grant because of its military population. The district will receive $270,000 over the course of three years.

“I think it’s a great benefit to military dependents because they have some unique needs, fears that non-military families don’t need to worry about. It’s something special,” Ms. Denny said. “It’s brought us more diversity than we’ve had in years, which is a good thing.”