Leadership Matters September 2013 .pub

49th Annual IASA Conference October 9—11, 2013 Click here to register or for more information

Vollmer: From critic to public education advocate Keynote speaker recalls how blueberry ice cream helped change his perspective

By Michael Chamness IASA Director of Communications

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the biblical bolt of lightning that converted Saul into Paul, but Jamie Vollmer’s transformation has been no less surprising to some. A businessman who once was a harsh critic of public schools, Vollmer has spent much of the past three decades promoting public education. An author and nationally known speaker, Vollmer will kick off the IASA Annual Conference in Springfield October 9 with a keynote address titled “Welcome to the Great Conversation: Building public support for public schools one community at a time.” It was a simple question by a teacher that gave Vollmer pause. He refers to it simply as “The Blueberry Story.” You see, Vollmer came to the public education reform discussion by an unusual route. It came following a career in law and another in manufacturing as president of the Iowa-based Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company whose claim to fame was producing blueberry ice cream that People magazine labeled “The Best Ice Cream in America.” President Ronald Reagan had served the ice cream to White House guests. Vollmer was giving his fire-and-brimstone speech about the failures of public education, including his usual three assumptions: 1) that public schools needed to change; 2) that educators were the problem; and 3) that public schools should be run like businesses. But this was his first time delivering the sermon to teachers. “If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!” he concluded. It was during the Q & A session that a teacher asked Vollmer what he would do if he found a substandard shipment of blueberries on the loading dock of his highly regarded ice cream company, one he already had confirmed used only “super-premium, nothing but Triple-A” ingredients. “Would you send them back?” the woman asked. Vollmer knew he had been trapped by his own logic. “We can never send back our blueberries,” the

Author and public education advocate Jamie Vollmer

veteran English teacher continued. “We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!” The comparison of kids to blueberries wasn’t apples to apples, so to speak, but the point hit its mark with Vollmer. Vollmer’s evolution from spewing what he termed “empty business rhetoric” into the winner of the 2012 “Friend of Education” award from the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the “Learning and Liberty” award presented by the National School Public Relations Association was not completed during that one loaded blueberry question. “It was only a beginning because I had some deeply held convictions and people don’t give those up easily,” he said. “But it stopped my momentum. It made me understand that maybe this thing is not as simple as I thought.” Vollmer’s foray into public education came at the (Continued on page 5)

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