Kincaid’s Plan to Save Our Children’s Future: Safe Schools, Real Results, Proven by the Best in the Nation

The Civic Service Academy: A Phase by Phase Plan to Rebuild Trust and Rescue Failing Schools

Before a tech company launches a product it runs a beta test. Before a car reaches the road it goes through years of testing. We prove that it works before we scale it. Everywhere except public policy.

This is a proposal to do better. It addresses two national crises at once. The first is the widening gap between the American military and the public it defends. The second is the slow abandonment of children in failing schools. One proven model can begin to answer both. And we will test it carefully in the open. Before we ask anyone else to adopt it.

A National Problem Not a Local One

The military and the country it protects no longer know each other. Fewer Americans than ever have a parent, sibling or a neighbor who served. The armed forces now recruit from the same families and the same regions year after year. While most of the nation has no personal connection to the institution at all. In a 2024 survey 87 percent of young people aged 16 to 21. Said they were probably not or definitely not considering military service. That is not a problem advertising can fix. It is a trust problem.

At the same time this country has accepted something it should never accept. Across America in cities and small towns alike. Children sit in schools that do not teach them to read or to do math. And we just accept it as the way things are . I mean we might talk about it sometimes. But we don’t really do anything about it. Politicians give speeches. We spend more money every year. No improvements nothing really changes .

A failing school is not a minor problem. For too many children it is a sentence. It puts them on a path. That will have them end up in prison or the graveyard. We have known this for decades we have tolerated it for decades. I will not.

The Model Already Works

The Department of Defense is not a newcomer to education. It is the best operator of public schools in America. Public schools don’t even come close to their success in education.

Through the Department of Defense Education Activity. The DoD runs more than 160 accredited schools serving students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Nation's Report Card, DoDEA students ranked first in the country in both reading and math. In both fourth and eighth grade. They outscored the national average by 14 to 25 points. And while scores across American public schools fell theirs held steady. No state matched them.

Some will say those schools succeed only because military family life is stable. But there is a civilian answer to that objection. The Oakland Military Institute is a public college preparatory academy whose student body is roughly three quarters low income. Overwhelmingly students of color and almost entirely civilian. These are not officers' children. They are working families' kids from one of California's toughest urban environments. And the academy graduates 92 percent of them. That is above the national average. The difference is not the children. The difference is the model.

What This School Is and What It Is Not

Because of all the anti military and anti America rhetoric. That will come from people that will attack this idea. Let me be absolutely clear. No student at this school will be required to join the military. Not one. There is no obligation, no enlistment contract, no pressure to serve. This will be a public school funded by the Department of Defense. A new option for parents of students in failing schools. For most of these parents. Private school and homeschooling are not accessible options for them. This will be a new third option.

Right now the children in failing schools have their choices taken from them before they are old enough to make them. A good education is freedom. A senior in high school. Who cannot read at grade level is not free. They are sentence to economic enslavement . Their future has already been narrowed for them. Doors they don’t even know exist are closing while they sit in a classroom that is failing them .

This school gives that freedom back. A graduate of this academy can join the military if they choose. Or go to college. Or learn a trade. Or start a business. Or chase any dream they have in any place they choose to go. The purpose is not to make soldiers. The purpose is to make sure every door is open instead of closed. So that every child walks out prepared for whatever future they want. More choices. More opportunities. Endless possibilities. That is what a real education gives a child and that is what these children are owed.

Safe by Design and Independent by Design

Two features set this school apart from the schools these families are leaving and both are deliberate. First is safety. This academy will have trained, professional security on campus as a permanent part of how it operates. Not as a temporary response to a tragedy. Not as something added after the fact. Built in from the first day. This matters because we are living through an era of school shootings and violence on school grounds. And at the very moment families are most afraid. Many local school boards have voted to remove police officers from their schools entirely. Parents have watched their elected boards take protection away, and they have had no say in it. At this academy that decision is not on the table. The security is structural. No board vote can take it away.

Second is independence. This academy will not be under the control of the local school board. The local board will not set its curriculum, will not dictate its education policy. Will not govern how it is run. It operates under the Department of Defense Education Activity. The system that already produces the best public school results in the country. That is the entire point. These families are leaving schools governed by boards that have failed them. Boards that have made promises they did not keep. Local school boards stripped away protections their children needed. This school answers to a proven national standard instead. Parents are not trading one broken local system for another. They are getting something built on the system that works.

This is what real choice looks like. A school that is safe because safety is built into its design. Effective because it is run by the best operator in the country. Not by the same local board the family is trying to leave behind.

Phase One: A Two Site Beta Test in Washington

We start at home and we start carefully. A single test site in one community tells you only whether the model works in that one place. To know whether it can work anywhere. You have to test it in more than one kind of community. So Phase One establishes two academies in two very different settings. Operated by DoDEA Americas, the domestic branch of DoDEA. We are not inventing a new agency. We are authorizing a proven one to open new campuses.

Site One: Northern Washington's 1st District

The first academy opens in the northern part of my own district. In the Marysville, Arlington and Granite Falls corridor. I am not asking another community to volunteer first. I am starting in my own.

And the need here is real. People assume every school in this district is excellent. Most are but not all. At Marysville Pilchuck High School. Only about 15 percent of students are proficient in math and the graduation rate trails its neighbors. The school spends more per student than nearby schools that do better. At Granite Falls Middle School. Math proficiency sits around 16 percent. These are not wealthy suburbs. These are working families whose children are being left behind in my own district. They deserve a choice.

Site Two: The Rainier Beach Community

The second academy opens about a year later. In the Rainier Beach community of South Seattle. This is not in my district. It is in District 7. But I have said from the beginning that I intend to represent the people of Washington. Not just the lines on a map. And the children of Rainier Beach need this.

This is not one struggling school. It is a cluster of them. Rainier Beach High School posts math proficiency in the low twenties, less than half the proficiency a child needs. The schools that feed it tell the same story. Across the Rainier Valley zip code that holds these schools. The average math proficiency is roughly 36 percent against a state elementary average of 43. With several schools in the bottom tier of the state. Dunlap, Aki Kurose, South Shore, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, one after another. All serving children who are overwhelmingly low income and overwhelmingly children of color. All falling short.

Opening the second site here does three things. It tests the model in a dense urban setting very different from the northern corridor. Which gives the beta test far stronger data. It proves this program is national in purpose and not a favor to my own district. And it brings a real choice to children who have been failed for a generation.

The Review Year

After both academies have been fully open and operating. We stop and we look honestly at what we built. One full year of operation at full enrollment. Followed by an independent evaluation reported to Congress. What worked, we keep. What did not, we fix. What failed, we admit. We do not scale a single thing until the data earns it. This is the step every other approach skips and it is the reason this one will not.

Phase Two: Scaled Testing

If Phase One succeeds and the data shows it works. We move to Phase Two. We open a small number of additional academies across different states. Chosen for different regions, demographics and community types. Each becomes a regional test under new conditions. Again we collect data. Again we fix what does not work and scale what does.

Phase Three: National Availability with Real Choice

Once the model has been proven through two phases of real testing we make it available to any state that wants it.

Participation is always opt in for states and for families alike. No state is forced to host one. No family is ever forced to attend one.
Every academy runs on the same proven framework: tuition free, lottery based, structured, safe and academically rigorous.
One or two academies per state is enough to begin. A single academy does not reach 500 students. It reaches 500 families, their relatives, their neighbors and the surrounding community. It becomes a permanent anchor of trust and opportunity in a place that had neither.

Why This Is the Realistic Path Forward

We will never close the gap between the military and the public with advertising. We have spent billions trying and the gap keeps growing. And we will never rescue a failing school by pouring the same money into the same model and expecting a different result.

But a measured phased evidence based program. Built on the best performing school system in the country. Tested in two very different communities before it is offered to anyone else? The distance between the armed forces and the public. The abandonment of children in failing schools. Are concerns voiced by both parties. This is not a partisan program. It is national infrastructure for trust, service and opportunity. It is among the best and most lasting investments we could make.

We prove it in Washington first in two communities that need it. One in my district and one beyond it. Then we earn the right to offer it to the rest of the country.

But Can We Afford It? We Cannot Afford Not To.

I have already argued that America's defense budget is too high and that we can spend less while getting more. So let me answer the obvious question directly. How does building schools fit a promise to cut spending? Because this program does not add to the long term bill. It lowers it in more than one place at once.

It Lowers the Cost of Recruiting

The military spends enormous sums trying to reach young people who never think about service. Roughly two billion dollars a year on recruitment and advertising. And much of it is wasted. The clearest example is recent and almost hard to believe. The Army signed an 11 million dollar marketing deal with the United Football League and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. One of the most famous men on the planet to boost recruiting. Johnson was to make five Instagram posts promoting the Army. Each valued at one million dollars against his 396 million followers. He made only two. By the Army's own review. The deal did not bring in a single new recruit and was projected to have cost the Army 38 enlistments. The Army moved to recoup six million dollars. That is what it looks like to chase a generation that has no relationship with the military. Money poured into Instagram, into celebrity, into esports and sports deals with nothing to show for it.

Now set that against the everyday cost. By recent estimates it costs the Army around 23,500 dollars in total to recruit a single soldier. The national average to educate a child in public school for an entire year is about 17,600 dollars. Stop and absorb that. We spend more to recruit one soldier. Then we spend to teach a child for a full year. And the recruiting money buys a relationship that lasts a recruiting season. A school buys one that lasts a lifetime for an entire family.

That is the long game. When millions of Americans grow up knowing a Department of Defense school. Knowing its teachers, and watching its graduates succeed. The military stops being a stranger. It no longer has to spend a fortune just to get on the radar. The advertising bill goes down because the trust and relationship is already there.

It Lowers the Cost of Failing Schools

We already spend heavily on the schools that are failing these children. We are getting poor results for the money. This is waste with a sympathetic face. But a model that actually teaches children to read and to do math. At a comparable cost is a better return on the very same dollars.

And the savings do not stop at the schoolhouse door. A failing school does not just produce a low test score. It produces a young person headed toward crime and prison. Toward a lifetime of dependence on government services. Every one of those outcomes is enormously expensive to the taxpayer. A child who graduates prepared. Who goes on to college or a trade or a business. Does not just avoid those costs. He pays into the system instead of drawing from it. Better schools mean better students. Who become better employees. Who build a stronger economy. That is a return no advertisement can buy.

The Bottom Line on Cost

This is not new spending piled on top of old. It is the same dollars spent on something that works. Less wasted on recruiting a generation that is not listening. Less wasted on schools that are not teaching. Less spent in the long run. On prisons and on poverty. The military spends less to reach people. The country spends less on the consequences of school failure. And in return we get more productive citizens that will build stronger economy. We get a military the public actually knows and trusts. That is not a cost. It is one of the best investments of tax dollars we could possibly make.

Proposed Legislation

Civil Military Trust and Education Pilot Act of 2027

Section 1. Title

This Act shall be known as the "Civil-Military Trust and Education Pilot Act of 2027."

Section 2. Purpose

The purpose of this Act is to:

Establish a publicly funded civic education pilot program operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity.
Strengthen the relationship of trust between the armed forces and civilian communities that have little or no connection to military service.
Provide families a tuition free, structured and safe public education option modeled on the highest performing public school system in the nation.
Test the model in two communities of materially different character in order to produce strong, generalizable data.
Evaluate real world outcomes across academic achievement, school safety, community trust and operational feasibility and create a scalable, data driven model to inform any future expansion.

Section 3. Establishment of Pilot Academies

The Secretary of Defense acting through DoDEA Americas, shall establish two pilot Civic Service Academies.
Site One shall be located within the northern portion of Washington's 1st Congressional District. In the area served by the Marysville, Arlington or Granite Falls communities.
Site Two shall be located in the Rainier Beach community of Seattle, Washington. Selected for its materially different urban, demographic and economic character.
The two site design is an essential element of the pilot. Intended to test the model across distinct community types.

Section 4. Voluntary Participation

No student enrolled in either academy shall be required to enlist in, register for or commit to service in any branch of the Armed Forces as a condition of enrollment, attendance or graduation.
Enrollment is entirely voluntary and no preference in admission shall be given on the basis of a family's connection or intent to connect to military service.
The purpose of the academies is educational. Any future decision by a graduate to pursue military service, higher education, vocational training or any other path shall be the graduate's alone.

Section 5. Authorization of Funds

(a) Establishment

There is authorized to be appropriated a one time sum for site acquisition or construction for each of the two academies. Because this cost depends on whether suitable existing facilities are acquired and renovated or new campuses are constructed. The appropriated amount shall be determined by the Director of DoDEA based on a facilities assessment for each site. And shall be reported to Congress before funds are obligated. This authorization shall also fund equipping each facility, hiring qualified educators and administrators. Trained security personnel and immediate startup costs.

(b) Operational Budget

An operational appropriation is authorized for each fiscal year of the pilot. Scaled to the number of grades open at each site in that year. Operational funding shall be calculated on a per pupil basis benchmarked to comparable public school spending in the Puget Sound region. Because grades are added incrementally under Section 6. First year operational costs reflect partial enrollment and grow as each academy approaches full capacity. Any unspent funds in a given fiscal year shall be placed into a reserve fund managed by the Director of DoDEA.

Section 6. Phased Grade Implementation

Each academy shall open in stages beginning with secondary grades.
In its first year of operation. Each academy shall enroll grades 9 and 10.
In each subsequent year additional grades shall be added. Expanding upward through grade 12 and downward toward kindergarten. Until each academy serves a full kindergarten through twelfth grade population.
Site Two shall open approximately one year after Site One. Allowing lessons from the first launch to inform the second.
The Director of DoDEA shall determine the precise annual sequence consistent with sound staffing and facilities planning.

Section 7. Operating Authority, Siting and Governance

The pilot academies shall be established and operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity. Acting through DoDEA Americas.
This Act expressly authorizes DoDEA Americas to operate the pilot academies at sites located off of a military installation. And to enroll students who are not military connected. Not withstanding any existing limitation restricting DoDEA enrollment to dependents of service members.
Each academy shall operate independently of local school district governance. No local school board shall control, direct or set the academy's curriculum. It would also not control education policy, staffing, security arrangements, or daily operations.
Each academy shall provide trained, professional security personnel on campus. As a permanent feature of its operation, not subject to removal by local authority.
Each academy shall comply with applicable federal civil rights protections and federal education requirements.

Section 8. Student Eligibility and Enrollment

(a) Served Area

Each academy shall serve families residing within a 15 mile radius of that campus.
The served area is defined by distance from the campus. Not by congressional, school district or municipal boundaries. Any family residing within the radius is eligible to apply. Regardless of which district or city they live in.
A 15 mile radius reflects a practical daily commuting distance and keeps each academy rooted in the community it serves.

(b) Eligibility and Cost

All families residing within a served area shall be eligible to enroll their children. Subject to grade availability under Section 6.
Where applications exceed available seats. Admission shall be determined by random lottery.
Enrollment shall be tuition free.

Section 9. Data Collection and Reporting

The Director of DoDEA shall oversee independent evaluation of the following at each site:

Academic achievement and standardized assessment results.
Graduation and college and career readiness rates.
School safety records and incident data.
Enrollment demand and retention.
Survey data measuring family and community attitudes toward and trust in the armed forces.
Cost per pupil and operational efficiency.

An evaluation report comparing outcomes across both sites shall be submitted to Congress. Beginning one year after both academies are fully open and operating. This report shall be the basis for determining whether Phase Two implementation is warranted.

Section 10. Sunset and Transition

Unless extended by Congressional reauthorization. The pilot program shall sunset following a defined period of operation and evaluation. Allowing for an orderly transition for enrolled students. All data collected during the program shall be transmitted to Congress and used to determine the feasibility of expansion to additional states.

Section 11. Definitions

"Academy" means a Civic Service Academy established under this Act.
"DoDEA" means the Department of Defense Education Activity.
"DoDEA Americas" means the domestic operating component of DoDEA.
"Director" means the Director of the Department of Defense Education Activity.