Military children are slipping through the cracks in schools

By Brianna Keilar, CNN

(CNN) — A few years ago, when my husband was still in the army, we went to a semi-regular parent and staff meeting at our kids’ school.

It was the beginning of the school year, just after Blue Star Welcome Week, an annual event launched by the nonprofit Blue Star Families to support the families of the more than 600,000 active duty and transitioning veteran families that settle into a new community each year.

I’m on the board of Blue Star Families and I had been talking to military spouses about what makes them feel welcome in a new place and many pointed to gestures by others in the community involving their children: recommendations for pediatricians, an invitation to a playdate, an offer to be an emergency contact.

With these families on my mind, I decided to see if their kids might be in class with mine, feeling sheepish it hadn’t occurred to me to do so before.

“Are there any military families in the school?” I asked at the meeting. “It would be good to reach out and see if they need anything.”

“No, there are no military families in the school,” a school official told us.

My husband and I looked at each other.

“Well, there’s at least one,” I laughed.

The school official asked if we had checked the box to identify our children as belonging to a military family at registration and my husband confirmed he had. She immediately made a note to check if there were any other military families at the school who were flying under the radar as we were, which we greatly appreciated.

Military families blend into our towns and cities. Seventy percent of them live off base in our neighborhoods where communities are not always equipped to manage their transitions.

Military families often move every two to three years, a pace so disruptive to their quality of life that the Pentagon is looking to extend assignments to reduce the tempo of military moves, known as permanent changes of station.

Moving can be tough on kids, tougher if they run into red tape as they transition schools between states, which happens a lot.

That’s why there’s an agreement between all 50 states and Washington, DC called the Military Interstate Children’s Compact Commission (also known as MIC 3). The compact is supposed to ease the moving pains of military transitions.

But Kaitlyn Chin and three other recent graduates of Sumner High School in Hillsborough County, Florida found, despite the MIC 3 compact, that military children were falling through the cracks in their state. High school credits from schools in other states were not transferring to their new Florida school. Some were unable to enroll in time for the school year, which meant they were occasionally left out of sports and clubs.

“Students [were] falling behind, having their GPAs lowered, and some of them were not even able to graduate on time,” Kaitlyn explains.

“This takes a very emotional toll and mental toll on these students as well as their families, because their parents are trying to fight for them as well as fighting for our country at the same time.”

Kaitlyn’s father is a veteran, but the other students who took interest in the problem facing military families had no connection to the armed forces, like Grace Siderio.

“Here I am, enjoying my senior year, getting to go to all my events and do ‘Senior Sunrise’ and ‘Senior Skip Day,’” Grace says, “and other students who have families who are serving in the military, protecting our country, they can’t do some of these events because they’re being held back.”

Kaitlyn and her classmates first became aware of the problem from a teacher last year when Hillsborough County School District partnered with iCivics, the nonprofit funded by the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Blue Star Families, to brief educators on how to better support military kids in schools.

The high school students surveyed 100 educators across Florida. The state is home to the fourth largest population of military family members in the nation and yet they found not one educator they surveyed had heard of the MIC 3 compact.

The teens set out to change that, drafting a law requiring training for educators on the agreement and how to better support military families in schools, and lobbying legislators to support it.

On May 30, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed their bill into law.

After their success, the teens visited nearby MacDill Air Base to talk with families who may benefit from the law. They’re optimistic as they wait to see the effects of the law.

“The [staff] who are transferring [students in military families] are going to be more prepared and better trained for how to facilitate their transfers and it’s going to make the whole process run a lot smoother, which it already should have been,” says Grace.

These Florida teens are now settling into their college freshman year, proud that military children may be better able to settle into their classrooms around the state because of the law they helped to pass.

They hope their school project can be a model for other young people of how to serve Americans who are serving their country in the military.

“Why are we not taking the same initiative to be selfless and to put forward our best efforts to make sure that their transitions are smoother when they’re already doing so much for us?” says Kaitlyn.

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