JBER School Liaison Services Offers Support, Assistance to Military Students

Moving duty stations is a part of life in the military. It can be fun and exciting, but it can also be stressful because oftentimes, it isn’t just the military member moving, but spouses and children. With each move, military children face many school-related challenges, and the to assist with meeting those challenges, the military created the School Liaison Services office to help ease the transition from one school to another and help families navigate the school system, ensuring our military youth have the opportunity to achieve academic success. The School Liaison serves as the central point of contact for commanders, military families, and local school systems on school-related matters for grades K-12.

Many military families call the Mat-Su Valley home, making the commute to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), and for many of those families, the School Liaison Office (SLO) is the primary point of contact for military families navigating education in the Mat-Su Borough School District (MSBSD), providing assistance with school transitions, registration, and deployment support.

The SLO provides support for school transfers, helping families arriving at or departing from JBER with school placement in the Mat-Su area; providing district advocacy by acting as a bridge between military leadership and the MSBSD to address unique military challenges; coordination with the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) to ensure specialized educational needs are met in local schools; and ensuring schools follow the Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission (MIC3) guidelines regarding credit transfers and graduation requirements.

Colonel Dustin Hanson, Mission Support Group Commander at JBER also serves “an advocate for our military-connected students,” and currently, the sole SLO is Adele Daniels, supporting both Anchorage and MSBSD. During the January 21 MSBSD school board meeting, Col Hanson highlighted some of the programs that have had success with military-connected students:

Anchored for Life, a peer-to-peer transition program in which military students, upon transferring to a new school, are met by other military students as a way to engage with others who have shared experiences transferring and can empathize and help ease the transition, and make new friends along the way.

Readers are Leaders, a program in which active duty military members can either read to younger students, helping the get more familiar with reading, or offer a safe space for kids to read to them as they build their reading proficiency skills. “If you want a non-judgmental person just hear you read, and do it in a friendly, encouraging way, you have service members that volunteer for those opportunities to be read to,” he explained.

Col Hansen extended an invitation for schools in the MSBSD to come and visit JBER, telling the school board that it is a wonderful way for students to become familiar and exposed to some of the military operations and some of the career opportunities beyond the military, stating that over 3,200 civilians work on the post. He said that the base is always busy and is looking at projects three, even seven years down the road.

To learn more about the JBER School Liaison Services, please contact them at 907-384-1500 or via www.jberlife.com/school-liaison-services/