Except for the heavily armed guard at the entrance, there is little to suggest that the sprawling Navy airbase outside Lemoore—a town of 25,000 in central California—is anything but an oddly placed subdivision. Driving through its streets, we pass manicured lawns, several playgrounds, even a McDonald’s. It is not until we come to an intersection that the first hint of our location appears. Daddy, your princess has missed you! reads a handmade sign, swaying gently in the wind.
“You see those all the time,” says Jack Boogaard, the longtime assistant superintendent of business for the Central Union School District, which operates two schools on the base. The stress caused when parents are deployed, along with the constant shifts in student population as families cycle in and out, poses a unique…