Episode 91: Cameron Vickrey on RootEd & public education

George talks with his daughter Cameron about her nonprofit organization, RootEd, in San Antonio that promotes public schools to families navigating the world of school choice.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:

Why would someone send their child to a local public school who has the resources and the opportunity to send the child to private school, to a charter school, to a school in a better neighborhood even that they might move to? Cameron Mason Vickrey and her family have made just that choice. She has started an organization with some friends called RootEd, RootEd, that is rooted locally in the public school. She's going to tell us on Good God about what are some of the things that would be missed by failing to be there in that local public school. Stay tuned. Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith in public life. I'm your host, George Mason, and I'm delighted to welcome back to the program my special guest, special first child, Cameron Mason Vickrey. Cameron, welcome back.

Cameron Vickrey:

Thank you.

George Mason:

We're so glad to have you here on Good God. In our first conversation, we talked a lot about your own personal sense of call, your role of ministry, how you discerned all of that. In this episode, I want to be a little more specific about some of the things that you're passionate about and focus primarily on the work you're doing right now, which is often about public education. Now, I remember sitting on our back porch one day a few years ago when you looked at me and said, "Dad, I think I feel a little bit like an Old Testament prophet who is called to speak about public education." How did that sense of passion and call come to you and what does it mean for you?

Cameron Vickrey:

Well, what I said about feeling like an Old Testament prophet, that came from a conversation that I had with some friends that didn't go so well. I remember, and this is when I think I just had two really small kids, so we were not in school yet, and they had the same, and they were talking about the lengths that they would go to move to the best neighborhood to put their kids in the best schools, which is what most parents do. I just kind of kept saying, "Are you sure you have to do that right? Can't you just go where you live now? It's fine. It's great. You know your kids are going to be fine." He said to me, "Well, wouldn't you do anything you can to give your child the best that you can give them?" I just remember saying, I think I said, "I don't think I would."

George Mason:

Right.

Cameron Vickrey:

Of course, like any parent, I want what's best for my kid. But I didn't think... I kind of knew then that I don't think I'd be willing to go to the lengths that a lot of parents are willing to go to just for the sake of my kid if it comes at the expense of other people's kids. Because what I've learned along the way is that every single parent, no matter your economic status, your education or whatever, every single parent wants what's best for their kid, but not everybody has access to that.

George Mason:

Right.

Cameron Vickrey:

I felt like this was kind of a social justice issue that I was becoming passionate about, making sure that everybody gets access to what's best for their kids, and public education is just a gift that's been given to us by our Founding Fathers.

George Mason:

Specifically for the purpose of creating an educated country, a democracy that would work because everyone would be educated enough to vote responsibly.

Cameron Vickrey:

Right. Right.

George Mason:

Yet, in the past 50 to 60 years, what we've seen is since the desegregation of the public schools, we've seen a voluntary move of people who have adequate resources to do so, to move more and more out of the city core and into more homogeneous environments where they are able to be with students who are more like them. Let's be honest, that's mostly white and upper middle class and more. What's happened is a kind of undermining of the tax base in the urban core and neighborhoods are no longer as diverse. The schools are not as diverse and they're more challenged and under-resourced.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah. Yeah. Going back to my sense of call with this, when Finley was a baby-

George Mason:

Right. Your oldest daughter.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yup. I worked part time at an education nonprofit here in Dallas, back then it was called The Dallas Faith Communities Coalition, and working on faith communities, getting involved in public education advocacy. I just kind of kept finding myself in those positions of working on faith-based public school advocacy. Pastors for Texas Children is another place that I've served and gotten to do that. Since living in San Antonio, it's not very far from Austin and Charlie Johnson, who runs Pastors for Texas Children, started calling on me to go up to Austin because I was a little closer than he was maybe. I got to, you know.

George Mason:

Do advocacy work.

Cameron Vickrey:

I got to do advocacy work. Yeah. I really got thrown into the deep end actually.

George Mason:

One of my favorite stories about that. You did. You did. One of my favorite stories is you bringing all three girls.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah. one time, this was my first time to testify before the House Public Education Committee in Austin and I had a seven week old baby, a three year old, and a four year old. These things can take all day. I just didn't know how I was going to do it without bringing especially the baby. I can't just bring the baby. I kind of need help. Garrett came to and we just made it a family day. It was a really long day. It was a really long day. We were there for 11 hours. Finally, it was my turn to testify and I was wiped out. I didn't remember what I was going to say. My oldest, Finley, the four year old, at the last second just insisted on coming with me. She came right up to the microphone with me while I said my piece.

Cameron Vickrey:

I don't think I said anything very intelligent at that point. Certainly nothing that was going to change their minds, but it was a meaningful moment for me definitely.

George Mason:

Well, okay. Then let's move to the kids are in school and you've had some of these difficult questions and conversations with friends and people in the neighborhood. When you talk about being a prophet for public schools, prophets were often not popular people. They often said difficult things that may have been true, but were not necessarily well-received in their time, and yet over time they proved to be important. What were some of the difficult things that happened as you began to have these conversations with people who were disagreeing with you?

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, I really didn't expect to have this happen where I live in San Antonio because I've been committed to this idea that no matter where we live, our kids are just going to go to school there and it will be fine. My kids don't necessarily deserve better than other people's kids just because I think they're amazing. They're going to go to school where we live. Well, when we moved to San Antonio, Finley was two and I had a baby. I wanted Garrett to be really close to home when he was at work so that he could come home for lunch. We moved a mile away from the church and that's what I was looking for. We didn't even look up the schools. We landed in this neighborhood with the most precious school that you can possibly imagine.

Cameron Vickrey:

Clearly a no brainer and I figured for everybody it'd be a no brainer. The closer we got to school, people would ask me, "Well, are you going to send your kids to Oak Meadow?" I'm like, "Yeah, don't you?" They'd say, "Oh no. We homeschool," or whatever else they do. People have historically always made choices besides public school, but that was the first time that I realized, oh wait, it's not even a bad school that you're avoiding. You're even avoiding a really good school. What is going on? Then around the time that my kids started going to school, charter schools really started popping up as kind of the new thing. We had a whole host of people from our neighborhood school leave. I just explained that as it's a grass is greener phenomenon. They just thought this is the new thing.

Cameron Vickrey:

It's the cutting edge thing. If I'm going to do the very best that I can do for my kid, I owe it to them to try out this new thing. Charters are very good at marketing and they know all the buzzwords of how to get parents interested in it.

George Mason:

Local public schools are terrible at marketing. Let's be honest.

Cameron Vickrey:

Right. They can't be. I mean, they can't be good at it because that's certainly not their training. It's not in their budgets for sure. It's not in their expertise. It's not in their budgets. Because public schools have to be so transparent, which is a really good thing, they know that people aren't going to like to see a huge piece of the budget going somewhere besides the classroom. They're just not able to really respond to some of these marketing trends that other schools are catching onto. Me and a couple of my friends decided to do something about that and help the public schools with some marketing. We created an organization called RootEd, and it's capital E, so RootEd.

George Mason:

RootEd. One word, but one word with a capital E.

Cameron Vickrey:

One word with a capital E and I like to pronounce it RootEd. People pronounce it RootEd or RootEd, but I like RootEd because the reason we chose the name is it's the sense of being rooted in your neighborhood, planting roots where you live, and seeing what can come from that, the fruits of that. The idea is parents will make whatever choices they're going to make. We really can't change people's minds. We've learned about that, but we want to maybe change their line of thinking when they're thinking about where to send their kids to school from maybe public schools as a last resort, which is something that is really a common approach. You think, well, I don't have time to homeschool. I can't afford private school.

Cameron Vickrey:

I'll try to get into a charter school, but the wait lists are probably really long, so then I guess I'll go to the neighborhood school. That's just a pattern that I've seen over and over again and we just want to change people's line of thinking and turn that trend so that the public school is their first choice.

George Mason:

Okay. I think that's really important too. You've told me that you are really working to focus on having these conversations with people who are not yet in school with their children and they're trying to decide to begin with. Because once you've made these choices, then it's really hard to change people's mind and change their course. But if you can start early and make them make that first choice, that really makes a difference.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, that's exactly right. People don't want to hear the choice that they've made for their kids' school is the wrong choice. I mean, who am I to say that anyway? But our public schools are feeling the pinch of all these alternatives. Charter schools, everybody has a different opinion about charter schools. They're not all bad. In San Antonio, we have kind of a unique problem in Texas I think, out of the state of Texas I think in San Antonio, we just have an over saturation of charter schools popping up right near high performing public schools.

George Mason:

High-performing. The whole idea of charter schools initially was to create alternatives that were public alternatives for parents who were only able to afford to send their kids to low performing schools.

Cameron Vickrey:

That's right.

George Mason:

That's not really the way it worked out.

Cameron Vickrey:

No. It's sort of turning into the new white flight. You don't have to go all the way to the suburbs anymore. You don't have to move. You can go anywhere, or you can live anywhere and go to a charter school. Yeah. We've realized that people make decisions about schools and really about anything in life because of out of fear or out of self-interest. That's just human nature.

George Mason:

Okay. I want to hold that point a little bit because when we come back from the break, I think this helps us move to the question of what does this have to do with faith? We were talking about your sense of call and that you have a spiritual feeling that public education and helping people make these choices, this is part of your religious sensibility, as well as just being a parent. I'd like to tie those two things together for people because I really think that it's often segmented where we have our religious life over here and then we have our educational life for our kids over here and the two come together over values I think. Let's talk about that when we come back.

Cameron Vickrey:

Okay.

George Mason:

Okay. Good. Thank you for continuing to tune in to Good God. This program is available as many of you already know in various formats. You can take it as a podcast that is delivered to all the places you would go, whether Apple Podcasts or Google Play, and you can hear it weekly and you can subscribe to it. A new episode drops every Thursday morning and so we invite you to do that and subscribe. You can also find the video format in various places on the Facebook page where we invite you to like Good God. You can also find it on YouTube and on Vokal Now, VOKALNOW.com, Vokal Now. These are various places you can go. I'd also want to tell you that you can go to the website, that's www.goodgodproject.com. goodgodproject.com. There you can find an archive of all of our previous episodes.

George Mason:

If you like what you hear on any given week, you might actually like to have a transcript of the conversation. If you go to the website, goodgodproject.com, you can find a transcript there also where you can cut and paste and use what's been said in that conversation. We'd invite you to find various ways to continue to tune in and to enjoy these conversations. One special thing I want to say is thank you to the friends of this program who have contributed financially to make it possible for us to do this without inviting you to have to give. We're grateful for the support of friends of this program, and I hope that you will be to. Please tell your friends about Good God and continue to tune in. Thanks for being part of it.

George Mason:

We're back with Cameron Vickrey and we've been talking about public education and your passion for it. You help to create up with some other friends an organization called RootEd and that is about helping people make public schools, their local neighborhood public schools, a first choice rather than the last chance for them.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, last resort.

George Mason:

A last resort. You were saying that one of the things that drives people to make the choice to leave their local school is fear.

Cameron Vickrey:

Absolutely. As we know, there is a lot to be afraid of right in this life, in this world. A lot of people are afraid of what their kids are going to be exposed to in public school maybe. I mean, I really do hear that. Of course, there's school shootings on the rise and people are afraid of that.

George Mason:

They happen everywhere.

Cameron Vickrey:

They happen not just in schools.

George Mason:

They really don't happen just in public schools too.

Cameron Vickrey:

Right. Not just in public schools. You can explain away a lot of fear as being irrational or whatever, but we all deal with that. But RootEd decided rather than just trying to tell people not to be afraid, we're going to tap into that fear factor and turn it into FOMO, fear of missing out.

George Mason:

Fear of missing out.

Cameron Vickrey:

We want to just tell positive stories about what's going on in neighborhood public schools, all the cool things that they do and that your kids get from that, and the way that it builds community. I mean, public schools are on the cutting edge of everything. Well, at least where we live. They have everything. They have STEM curriculum. They have the arts. There's just so much that public school offers that you can't always get.

George Mason:

I know in your public school, there's a high values oriented curriculum as well.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yes, and that's really a good point because some of the charter schools near us really market to value education. They really talk about values and character building and that kind of thing. Our school is a Leader in Me school, the Stephen Covey Seven Habits. That's built into every part of their curriculum. You get moral education and character building and all of that in public school. The way that we go about doing that, obviously we can't... Every school, every public school has such a unique culture. We can't expect to tell the stories of every school. Our model is that we have a RootEd rep, which is a parent, in every school.

Cameron Vickrey:

We're in five districts in San Antonio, and we have a parent in every school that is trained in education policy, in advocacy, does some advocacy for the schools, and basically understands that they are an ambassador of their school to the community. They take on the responsibility of taking pictures at school and posting really great stories about what's going on in their local school. Every school has its unique hashtag that's searchable, so #RootEdOakMeadow. The idea is, eventually as it really builds, that parents when they're looking for schools, they can search those hashtags on social media and see all of these things from a parent perspective of what's going on inside the school and really what it's like to go there and what your kid would be doing.

Cameron Vickrey:

We just want to highlight how great it is to be a part of this network of public schools and that if you choose something else, you're really missing out.

George Mason:

To me, this actually moves us though into the question that was raised earlier and that was the person who said to you, "Wouldn't you do anything to give your child the best chance for the best education?" But nobody ever asked the question, what are your metrics for that? I mean, what does it mean to have the best? Does that mean that you're going to be the best and advanced calculus, that you're going to have the highest test score on the English comprehension portion of the SAT, or does it mean something about a larger vision of humanity that your child is involved in? If there is an adequate level of performance on the academic scale-

Cameron Vickrey:

Which is still important.

George Mason:

..which is absolutely still important, there's something to be said for the fact I think that we live in an increasingly divided country, divided communities. They're divided rich and poor. They're divided still along the lines of color. We have all these different perspectives that we're missing out on because we're actually living apart from each other in these echo chambers of people who are like me so that society is becoming more like social media feeds instead of the other way around, right?

Cameron Vickrey:

That's right.

George Mason:

Public school it seems to me creates this sense of understanding across divisions, a feeling of empathy where there might be a reason why this child can't afford to go to gymnastics, for instance, and your child can. Well, that's a conversation about life that's really important to have, right?

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The empathy factor is really big. Public schools I think do a really good job of educating every kid that walks in the door no matter their special needs. Our school is the regional day school for the deaf, so my kids get to go to school with kids that use sign language. They've adapted that and they love that, but they understand. Actually a friend of mine, her son in fifth grade at our school went on a field trip to the Capitol with some friends in his class that are deaf. One of his friends that is hard of hearing asked the tour guide at the Capitol, "Well, could somebody like me be a legislator? Could I be governor even though I can't hear and I speak in sign language?"

Cameron Vickrey:

That was a really important moment for my friend's son to understand that this is something that I don't struggle with because I'm pretty normal, capable white male, but his friend had that question. Anyway, so I think that's something that public school gives you is this insight to the ways that different people experience the world. I even tell people our teachers are amazing, right? But sometimes you're going to get a teacher that you don't really like and your kid doesn't really like.

George Mason:

But isn't that true in private schools and in charter schools?

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, maybe.

George Mason:

I mean, I think it is. This learning to adapt and... When I was a kid, one of the shifts I've seen is when I was a kid, there was an assumption that my parents were on the side of the principal and the teacher pretty much all the time.

Cameron Vickrey:

Right.

George Mason:

That if I was in trouble in school, the question would be, well, what did you do to create this problem because clearly the people in authority had? Now, maybe that was overdone in an environment where there was always a predisposition to authority and those sorts of things.

Cameron Vickrey:

But if that was overdone in that direction, we've really gone to the other side of the spectrum now. What I was going to say about teachers is that, I mean, people, I feel like parents are hesitant to turn their kids over to another adult that they don't really know and they don't have trust at all established there because it's basically a stranger that sees your child almost more than you do. I mean, in my experience, I've absolutely adored every single one of our teachers. They've been amazing, but it's possible that you're not going to. That's a really good life experience. But yeah, parents are eager to pull their kid out of a situation that is not perfect at the first sign of conflict.

George Mason:

What does that do to the child's understanding of how to handle life when things go awry, when it doesn't go according to what's easy for them or what they desire, right? They pull up. They move off. They quit. I think these are life skills that are really important to learn character wise. Now, you and I both know that there are great advantages in terms of social networking for future jobs that occur at private schools and where there are people who have generational wealth and influence. That is something that can't be fully replicated at a public school.

Cameron Vickrey:

It's true.

George Mason:

We're not trying to say here I think that public schools have the advantage over every school. It's really a question I think of what advantage are you looking for. I think there is something to be said, even for the new economy that's emerging, for cultural intelligence that you gain in this environment. We are becoming a much more diverse workplace, and the ability to know and understand different ways in which people live and look at the world from the time you're in kindergarten on so that that's second nature to you is going to be a tremendous advantage at some point beyond just who does my father know in the legal profession that can get me ahead or some such thing, right?

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, exactly.

George Mason:

Where do you think RootEd is going next? You are RootEd in San Antonio right now. Just in San Antonio?

Cameron Vickrey:

Currently yes, just in San Antonio. Like I said, I think San Antonio has kind of a unique situation right now with the rise of so many charter schools, but I think that anybody could benefit from supporting their neighborhood school and promoting their neighborhood school across the state. But to answer your question, no, I think RootEd is pretty planted in San Antonio for the time being. I would really like to study enrollment trends over the next few years to see the schools that are very rooted. Are their enrollments growing? Is it a different trend than other schools and that kind of thing?

George Mason:

Right. That would seem important to be able to have some statistical basis to be able to offer analytics and say, "Look what's happened in these schools because of this." But if someone is watching or listening to this conversation and says, "I'm in Dallas or I'm in Houston or I'm in somewhere else, Fort Worth, what would they need to do to say, I'd like to start RootEd in my neighborhood school?"

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, Look us up for sure.

George Mason:

What's the website?

Cameron Vickrey:

Proudly RootEd-

George Mason:

Proudly RootEd-

Cameron Vickrey:

Dot com.

George Mason:

Dot com.

Cameron Vickrey:

Yeah, proudlyrooted.com. Yes, we have extended the offer that any school around the state can start using hashtags. I really think that's like the first thing that you should do is start doing hashtag RootEd the name of your school so that people can start seeing some presence about your school on social media that's specifically from a parent perspective just to say, "These are all the amazing things going on. You don't want to miss this. Your kid will thrive here."

George Mason:

Great. What do you need to help RootEd be more successful than it is today?

Cameron Vickrey:

That's a good question.

George Mason:

Because nobody gets paid for this, right?

Cameron Vickrey:

Nobody. No. This is all of our side hobby. I just want to see more community buy in for the public schools, which is not necessarily a benefit for RootEd. That's not the goal. The goal is for the schools because schools get a really bad rep. I mean, we're constantly dispelling rumors and myths about public schools. I would really like to see people start saying, "Well, I heard this about that middle school that it's just really bad and you just can't send your kid there, but I want to find out for myself. I'm going to stop listening to all these rumors and myths and go find out what the school is really like and what it has to offer." I challenge parents to do your own research and don't just go off of hearsay.

George Mason:

Well, Cameron, I think a lot of people who think about successful education go back to the family first and certainly I would want to say that I think your three little girls, my granddaughters, are developing beautifully and that has a lot to do with their mother and their father, but it also is obvious to me that they love their school and that they love their teachers and respect them and that they are learning a great deal because we interact with them all the time about that. I think you and your family are a living example of the importance of these values and that RootEd is a reflection of what's happening in your own family. Thank you for the witness and for the good example and thanks for being on Good God.

Cameron Vickrey:

Okay. Thanks.

Jim White:

Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White, social media coordination by Cameron Vickrey. Good God, conversations with George Mason, is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good. All material copyright 2020 by Faith Commons.

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