Jamie Vollmer used to be one of public education’s biggest critics. Propelled to fame when People magazine proclaimed his blueberry ice cream to be “the best in America,”

Vollmer was fond of telling everyone that “schools should be run like a business.” The Blueberry Story is all about the day one of public education’s biggest critics became one of its biggest supporters. Listen to the story in his own words:

Vollmer’s message is that of the incredible responsibility placed upon our schools, and that educators cannot do it alone. During American Education Week, there is perhaps no more appropriate message than this need for each of us doing what we can to help American public education.

“There is a place in America to take a stand: it is public education. It is the underpinning of our cultural and political system. It is the great common ground. Public education, after all ,is the engine that moves us as a society toward a common destiny… It is in public education that the American dream begins to take shape.”
—Tom Brokaw