DoDEA Funded Its Own School Repairs at 65% in 2025. The Next Budget Adds $869 Million to Send Kids Elsewhere.

The Department of War runs its own public school system for the children of service members — DoWEA, still widely known by its former name, the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).▸ As of the FY2027 budget request, it operates 160 schools: 106 overseas across 11 countries (Bahrain, Belgium, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom) and 53 domestic schools across seven states — Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia — plus Guam and Puerto Rico. In fiscal 2025 it enrolled 67,354 students in 161 schools; the FY2027 estimate is 66,370 students in 160 schools, per the Department of War Comptroller's FY2027 budget justification.

That same document contains a fact the Department states plainly, in its own table: in fiscal 2025, it funded the routine maintenance needed to keep those schools from deteriorating at 65% of the level required — 25 points under the Department's own 90% sustainment goal.▸ The FY2027 request now asks Congress for $781.2 million, one time, to repair facilities the Department itself rates "poor and failing." It also creates a new, larger mandatory line — $869.5 million — to send eligible military children to private, charter, or faith-based schools instead, implementing Executive Order 14191, signed January 29, 2025. Both numbers appear in the same budget request, funding the same population of children.

DoWDE — the Department of War Dependents Education program, which covers DoWEA schools plus Family Assistance and Family Advocacy services for military families — requested $3,493,232,000 in discretionary funding for FY2027, split almost exactly between DoWEA school operations ($2.29 billion) and Family Assistance/Advocacy programs ($1.21 billion).▸ On top of that sits $1,650,716,000 in mandatory funding that did not exist in this form a year earlier. In FY2026, the entire mandatory line was $110 million, covering Impact Aid payments to local school districts and military-spouse licensure support. For FY2027, both of those were eliminated and replaced with two new lines: $869.5 million for school-choice vouchers and $781.2 million for facility repair — pushing DoWDE's total budget from $3.71 billion in FY2026 to $5.14 billion in FY2027, a $1.43 billion jump driven almost entirely by these two mandatory additions.

The Department tracks facility funding against its own "sustainment rate" — the share of the calculated cost of routine maintenance that actually gets funded each year, measured against a Department-wide goal of 90% for DoWEA.▸ In FY2025, DoWEA schools were funded at 65%: $86.5 million against an implied requirement of roughly $133 million. The FY2026 and FY2027 budgets both target the full 90% goal — $125.4 million and $131.3 million, respectively — plus restoration-and-modernization funding on top ($13.0 million and $22.0 million). Total facility O&M funding rises from $115.6 million in FY2025 to $153.3 million in FY2027, a real increase. But that increase, and the FY2027 sustainment rate itself, are the routine maintenance budget — a separate line from the $781.2 million one-time repair request, which exists specifically because the Department's own facility ratings include schools in "poor" and "failing" condition after years of funding below its target.

For context on how slowly the ordinary construction pipeline moves: the FY2026 military construction budget for DoDEA funds exactly two new school buildings — Dexter Elementary School at Fort Benning, Georgia ($127.4 million) and the Ramey Unit School in Punta Borinquen, Puerto Rico ($155.0 million), $282.4 million combined.▸ That is the entire new-construction pipeline for a system of 160 schools in a single year.

Civilian staffing across DoWDE fell from 13,112 positions in FY2025 to 12,464 in FY2026 — a cut of 648 positions, before the FY2027 request adds a net three back.▸ Average civilian salary rose modestly over the same period, from $132,800 to $135,700. The cut landed in the same two-year window in which the Department's own sustainment rate bottomed out at 65% and the facility-repair backlog grew large enough to justify a three-quarter-billion- dollar one-time request.

All figures describe the FY2027 budget request as submitted — a request, not enacted law. The 65% and 90% sustainment figures are the Department's own calculated funding-to-requirement ratios, not an independent facility audit. The $869.5 million voucher line is new for FY2027; its administration and eligibility rules were still being implemented under Executive Order 14191 as of this budget submission.