Employee of the Quarter - 2020 First Qtr
Ms. Jennifer Dailey-Perkins
Education Partnership & Resources Specialist, Headquarters
Employee of the Quarter
January – March 2020
As an Education Partnership & Resources Specialist, Ms. Jennifer Dailey-Perkins was instrumental in working to develop creative solutions that laid the foundation for successful transition to distance learning for thousands of military connected students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through the execution of DoDEA’s robust grant program, DoDEA partners with public school districts to ensure they have the resources to advance academic, social and emotional programming to support military connected students. The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and has created educational disruption and school building shutdowns on a global scale. Ms. Dailey-Perkins went above and beyond to help combat these disruptions, such as working directly with 4 districts to provide technology devices and/or internet access to thousands of students for distance learning. She also worked with school districts such as Watertown City Schools to build the capacity to use their DoDEA-funded 3D printers to make 2000 face shields and ear savers for the N95 face masks to support local medical and emergency/rescue personnel.
Ms. Dailey-Perkins singlehandedly worked with 32 public school districts to provide performance modifications that allow these school districts the access to additional resources needed to successfully transition back to the classroom once shutdowns are scheduled to be lifted. This work safeguards the $63M investment DoDEA made through outreach efforts and has impacted over 81,000 military connected students.
Further, her work with the Penn State University Clearinghouse for Military Families also enabled the creation of the Penn State Clearinghouse COVID-19 webpage, which provides resources to help military-connected schools respond to the needs of military families during the COVID-19 pandemic . She also worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering to make this resource available to the larger DoD STEM community and their partners.
Accordingly, Ms. Dailey-Perkins is most deserving of this award, as her strong work ethic, leadership and compassion for student learning during these unprecedented times has ensured that DoDEA’s vision of “excellence in education for every student, every day, everywhere” is realized. Ms. Dailey-Perkins is most deserving of this recognition and she brings great credit upon herself, DoDEA, and the Department of Defense.