Command Sgt. Maj. Steven Winters received his orders last June to report to Fort Lewis. The Army gave him 30 days to move.

It was Winters’ 11th move in 18 years. He was accustomed to the routine. The biggest headaches may very well belong to his four children.

His son, Steven, had trouble getting into advanced-placement classes at Bethel High School despite a 3.75 grade-point average because a Texas school district lagged in sending official transcripts.

His 15-year-old daughter, Haley, also faced obstacles when her parents tried to enroll her in AP courses.

“When you only get 30 days’ notice to leave, the schools don’t react that quickly,” Winters told a meeting of the Senate Committee on Early Learning and K-12 Education in Olympia on Wednesday.

The 40-year-old is a top enlisted leader in the 296th Brigade Support Battalion, a unit of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. He shared his story with state senators, urging them to pass the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children.

The compact is a binding agreement among states that aims to address an array of disruptions military children face when they move, including graduation requirements, standardized testing, eligibility rules for sports and immunization regulations.

Entering the agreement would cost Washington $102,500 next fiscal year, according to a state estimate.

“Local school counselors don’t understand the problems military children face,” said Winters, whose son was on track to graduate early until graduation requirements in his new district intervened.

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The 81st Brigade Combat Team’s headquarters company is now serving on an Iraqi-owned base.

The Washington National Guard unit is running daily operations of Camp Ramadi in western Iraq. And at a meeting yesterday, a representative from the Iraqi army and brigade commander Col. Ronald Kapral signed a memorandum of agreement, transferring ownership of Iraq but agreeing that the base will can be used by coalition forces through 2011.

Kapral is the de facto mayor of the base just outside the capital of Anbar province.

But don't expect too much to change, according to a brigade news article: "Force protection measures will not be changed. All camp improvement projects will continue. Iraqis will take a look at the buildings on Camp Ramadi to see if it is something they want to keep. The physical structures built on camp Ramadi will either be prepared to be handed over in 2011 or torn down. Part of the agreement is for coalition forces to put the base back to the way they found it."

“Signing over of Ramadi is more symbolism than it is an actual event,” Kapral said in a story released by the brigade. “It shows that the U.S. military and the coalition forces are starting to prepare to turn over and demilitarize the bases that we have been using for the past five years. If you look at what has been done in the past five years, the Iraqi army has started taking responsibility for their actions. They’re starting to support themselves. They are proving training we have given them over the past three years is starting to pay off.”

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Dana Canedy was devastated. Her fiance, Army 1st Sgt. Charles King, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded under his Humvee in Iraq. King left behind Canedy and their 6½ -month old son, Jordan.

“I had all this grief and fear and anger and frustration and pain, and I had to do something with it,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I looked at my little boy and thought I could do something positive. I decided to write a book so he could know about his father and our relationship.”

The product of that labor is “A Journal for Jordan,” which weaves together the lives of Canedy and King with excerpts from the journal King kept for his son before and during his deployment.

Canedy, a senior editor at the New York Times who will speak about the book at the main branch of the Tacoma Public Library today at 7 p.m., gave King a blank journal shortly before he deployed with the Fourth Infantry Division.

Before his death on Oct. 14, 2006, the 48-year-old filled the journal with more than 200 pages of fatherly wisdom: “Never be ashamed to cry. No man is too good to get on his knee and humble himself to God. Follow your heart, and look for the strength of a woman.”

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