Purple Up Day celebrates students with active-duty parents at Nebraska schools
WEEPING WATER, Neb. (KLKN)- April 15th is now recognized by the Nebraska Board of Education as Purple Up Day. A day to highlight and celebrate students with active-duty parents.
A Purple Star school means that the school has met the requirements to help military families with their transition as they may be moving around a lot or may need extra support during deployment.
Only six public school districts, and one private school district are recognized in the State of Nebraska.
Many schools welcome military families with open arms, but because they may not be near Offutt Airforce Base, they may not have heard about the Purple Star.
There is a National Guard base in Lincoln, there are Army bases all over our State, and so even though those families aren’t transitioning and PCS from base to base, having that support in their school and their community is just as important for those families as it is for active duty,” said Dawn Bickford, K-12 counselor at Weeping Water Public Schools and Chief Master Seargent Air National Guard.
Bickford, an active-duty member, is grateful to work somewhere that respects and honors her service to our country.
“It’s huge. I work with people down at my base all the time whose employers don’t give them the flexibility that they need, or it’s a battle to get things that they need to do their military career. I don’t have that here at all. If I walked in and said, they are pulling me and I am leaving tomorrow, they would say okay we will figure life out,” Bickford said.
And as a mother, she is grateful to be in a supportive school and community.
“When I was deployed and my son was in 4th grade, the school was very helpful, if my husband needed to drop him off early, he could come and sit in the secretaries office before supervision technically got started. There were high school kids that made sure my husband knew that if he needed help or needed somebody, so the students were great about it as well,” Bickford said.
Bickford knows how hard it can be for children with active-duty parents.
“We can’t do what we do without our families, they probably really sacrifice more than we do. If you are on active duty, their lives are uprooted and you have moved around a lot. Guard does not do that, however, they still go through the same challenges with family members leaving,” Bickford said.
Even her children understand that having an active-duty parent can be challenging.
“It gets harder as I get older because I have more responsibilities and I feel like I want to talk to her more often but then I can’t when she is deployed so it’s scarier, but school helps,” said Tucker Bickford.
The idea of Purple Star schools was discussed and passed in the Nebraska State Legislature recently, and as soon as Superintendent Kevin Reiman heard about it, the school signed up.
“For us, or for myself, it is a very important thing. I was in the military, my dad was in the military, my grandparents were in the military, cousins are in the military, so it is a very personal thing for me,” Reiman said. “I want families to feel welcome. It’s important that we celebrate families like the Bickford’s because they are making a heck of a sacrifice for us and so we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help those families.”
During the April meeting, the Nebraska State Board of Education recognized April 15th as Purple Up Day.
“We know that there are a lot of unique inherent challenges that come with being a military family, and a military student, so the State Board of Education wanted to recognize that with the Purple Up day just to let everyone know that Nebraska is very supportive of military families,” said David Jespersen, administrator at the Nebraska State Board of Education
Purple was chosen to be the color representing this day because if you mix all the military colors together you get purple.
Schools can sign up to be Purple Star Schools at any time of the year. To learn more about how to get your school to join click HERE.
