Copperas Cove educator honored for Fort Hood school partnership

Copperas Cove High School’s Rebecca Garbacky was recognized for doing the quiet work that can make military life easier for students: connecting a campus in Coryell County with the Fort Hood units that shape so many family routines. Garbacky, the school’s student activities coordinator, received the Outstanding School Point of Contact honor through the Fort Hood Adopt-a-Unit/Adopt-a-School program, and the 15th Finance Battalion was honored alongside the school for the partnership.

Garbacky said the recognition caught her off guard. “Receiving Outstanding School POC in just my second year is something I never expected and I am incredibly humbled by this recognition,” she said. The award, reported by Copperas Cove High School on June 12, placed her among the key campus liaisons helping military-connected students find a steadier bridge between school and installation life.

That bridge matters in Copperas Cove, where Fort Hood is not a distant institution but a daily presence for many families. The Adopt-a-School framework is built to keep schools and units working together on practical support, from reading with students and building gardens to painting and helping during field days. Fort Hood’s program has expanded over time, with Army and school-hosted materials describing it as a nine-district effort that links more than 90 military units with as many as 119 schools. Earlier Army coverage put the total at 115 schools across nine Central Texas districts.

The program has also been part of Fort Hood life for more than two decades. The Army says Adopt-a-School was implemented in 2004, and Fort Hood leaders have repeatedly pointed to the challenge of helping new military families navigate school changes as the installation’s population shifts from year to year. At a 2023 education summit at Fort Hood, nearly 100 military leaders, school administrators and educators gathered to discuss how to better support military-connected students and make transitions less disruptive for families.

The 15th Finance Battalion adds its own weight to that partnership. The unit was reactivated at Fort Hood on Aug. 17, 2022, after first being created as the 15th Finance Company on March 15, 1971. It had last deployed in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, where it earned a Meritorious Unit Commendation. The reactivation began with about 80 soldiers and was expected to grow to roughly 180 finance professionals, underscoring that this is a real Fort Hood unit, not a symbolic one.

For Copperas Cove, the honor reflects more than one staff member’s effort. It points to the everyday structure that keeps a military town’s schools connected to the post next door, and to the people who make that connection work when students need it most.