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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
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)
Vollmer: From critic to public education advocate
Keynote speaker recalls how blueberry ice cream helped change his perspective
49th Annual IASA Conference
October 9—11, 2013
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Author and public education advocate Jamie Vollmer
