The Fuel That Keeps Us Going – Remembering Brent Bushey

Good evening, CharterFolk.

Every once in a while, a post comes along here at CharterFolk that I wish I didn’t have to write.

This is one such post.

Because my subject tonight is the sudden, devastating loss of Brent Bushey.

The tributes are already coming in.

Brent was the CEO at Fuel OKC, but the remembrances start with what an amazing person he was.

A wonderful husband to his wife Kirsten.

A wonderful father to his daughters, Charlotte and Maddie.

And a friend and colleague whose optimism and heart infused us all with energy and purpose.

CharterFolk readers are no strangers to the impact Brent had on our movement. We have often highlighted the work he was leading.

Last November, he wrote a terrific CharterFolk Contributor Column.

Going back and reading it again, I find it pure Brent.

Bristling with optimism and heart, and the belief that great schools can help make great cities.

As we look forward, we believe that OKC is a city with its best days ahead. We’re proud of the progress that we’ve made as a city, and we believe that our future growth can improve the quality of lives of ALL citizens by focusing on improving the city’s educational options. Our vision at Fuel OKC is to increase the number of students attending a quality school from 20% to 50% by 2030, and we think the growth of quality charter schools will be a key driver for this growth in quality schools as well as the continued quality of life for residents across the city.

You can feel what fueled him.

The difference a great school can make in a student’s life.

What that difference means for a family.

And what happens when enough of those schools begin to change the experience of an entire city.

What Fueled Brent

Three weeks ago, Brent helped me see it firsthand.

He and Barry Schmelzenbach, the CEO of the Oklahoma Charter School Association, were bringing me up to speed on the latest developments in Oklahoma chartering and walking me through the school visits they had arranged.

Before we left the restaurant, Brent asked me to come to a window.

He had chosen the place so I would have a chance to see what stood in front of us.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial, seen from almost the exact same vantage point.

The stories flowed.

The devastation the bombing had wrought on the community.

The remarkable resiliency the city had shown since.

And then, how much fun he had recounting the exact parade route …

… the NBA champion Thunder had taken past the memorial.

Where exactly he had stood.

How far downtown had come.

And how charter schools had become part of its renewal.

John Rex Charter School, he pointed out, was just down the block.

Brent had arranged a week of school visits. But first, he wanted me to understand the city.

What it had endured.

What it had become.

And what he believed it was yet to be.

It was the passion that had fueled him through a lifetime of work.

After attending high school in the Flint, Michigan area and graduating from Michigan State, Brent joined Teach For America. He taught and coached four varsity sports at Walter L. Cohen High School in New Orleans.

Cohen has since become part of Collegiate Academies, one of our most respected charter school organizations.

From the classroom, Brent moved into national recruitment work for TFA, serving as National Campaign Director for Recruitment from 2001 to 2003.

He then spent a decade in Washington, earning a master’s degree at George Washington University and working in public service.

In 2013, he became the founding Executive Director of the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center.

The idea was straightforward.

Charter schools and small school districts needed support that larger systems could provide through their central offices.

Brent set about building an organization that could meet those needs.

As more schools and districts turned to the Center, he became one of the most respected voices in Oklahoma education.

Eventually, even large districts were turning to the Resource Center for help.

As the Resource Center’s reach expanded, Brent saw an opportunity to bring a more dedicated focus to the growth of great charter schools in Oklahoma City.

So he became the founding CEO at Fuel OKC.

The Fuel That Became Fuel OKC

Around that time, I remember seeing him at a national gathering.

He was abuzz with the potential of his new organization, while noting the reactions some people outside Oklahoma had to its name.

As I remember him putting it:

Jed, these people got to understand, if you can’t claim with pride the role that fuel has played in the story of Oklahoma City, you have no business attempting to represent what this community is aspiring to do.

That was Brent.

Proud of the community he served.

Determined to understand it on its own terms.

And ready to put everything he had into helping it move forward.

Over the next two years, the work gathered momentum.

Across Oklahoma, new tools were making school performance easier to understand.

In Oklahoma City, Fuel created EnrollOKC, giving families a place to learn about district and charter school options. Then came a common application for all 32 public charter schools in the city.

Soon, more than 3,000 students who had never previously attended a charter school had applied through the new system.

Fuel invested in high-quality charter schools to help them serve more families

Through it all, stories of charter school growth began to mount …

… as did stories about academic strengthening …

… showing that OKC’s charter schools are generating outcomes rivaling any we see in the national landscape.

Amid all this energy, a text came in from Brent last spring:

Jed – our state charter school board (statewide authorizer) has an annual conference November 4-5. The director called me today for suggestions for a keynote speaker and when I suggested you, she was very excited. Turns out that Becky is an avid CharterFolk reader. Any interest?

I told him I make it a policy to be wherever Brent Bushey wants me.

His response was pure Bushey:

Best part of this is I don’t have to do any message training… it would be weird to tell you what I’ve learned in CharterFolk.

Before that November gathering, he and Barry arranged for me to come see the work firsthand.

Which is how I found myself at that restaurant window.

And, the next morning, at John Rex.

Patrick Duffy, the organization’s Executive Director …

… walked me through a campus that families come from far and near to attend.

Its greenhouse and garden beds …

… are part of a school woven into the life of a downtown experiencing a renaissance.

Here was the connection Brent had wanted me to see.

A city investing in itself.

A school giving families another reason to make their lives there.

With plans to expand announced in the final week of Brent’s life.

His vision stayed with me throughout the week.

At Dove, where Abidin Erez and his remarkable students showed off their robotics lab.

At the Academy of Okmulgee, where Eli Harbin and Paul Campbell showed how the promise of chartering is reaching rural Oklahoma as well.

And in Tulsa, where visits to the School for the Arts and Sciences …

… Under the Canopy …

… and Tulsa Honor Academy …

… revealed momentum and possibility as profound as any I’ve encountered in more than three decades of work in the charter school movement.

Flying home, reflecting on my time with Elsie Urueta Pollock …

… I came across an interview she had done with Darryl Cobb at the Charter School Growth Fund …

… and Brent’s response to it.

Can’t you see him?

Listening while doing chores.

His wife finding him with tears in his eyes.

Overcome by the progress CharterFolk are making.

It was, I believe, the fuel that became Fuel OKC.

His professional legacy lives in the schools he helped create and strengthen.

In the futures they are opening for young people.

And in the possibilities they are opening for the city he grew to cherish.

But Brent also fueled people.

Including those of us fortunate enough to work alongside him.

The Fuel He Leaves Us

About a year ago, some charter school advocates from across the country formed a little working group.

We shared a belief that our movement needs advocacy willing to go on offense.

To push unapologetically for greater, faster progress.

We lightheartedly named ourselves:

IFNOTUSWHO

The Institute For Narrative-Optimizing Transformation in Urban Settings While on Hellbent Offense.

It was natural that we would want Brent to be a founding member.

We were fortunate that he agreed.

But little could we have imagined how differently the name would resonate today.

IFNOTUSWHO

If not Brent, then who?

He brought something irreplaceable to our conversations.

Just as he did to our entire movement.

An insistence that we move forward with conviction.

And an equally strong insistence that we show empathy for people who have not yet come to see the world as we do.

The last text I received from him came last weekend.

Jed — I haven’t had a chance to listen to your podcast but I listened to NHJ on This American Life. You’re right to be critical that she doesn’t bring up charter schools, but if you listen, she opens the door for that option at the end of this episode by recognizing how much the school failed her child:

I appreciated the humility/vulnerability at the end. I was listening while standing in a lake last weekend and I wasn’t expecting that twist. Pleasant surprise.

Can’t you see him?

Standing in a lake.

Listening.

Finding something to appreciate in a person whose arguments he could also challenge.

Then reaching out to make sure a friend heard it, too.

The same optimism. The same heart.

As when his wife found him doing chores with tears in his eyes.

That was the spirit he brought to the work.

And the spirit he helped fuel in others.

There is no replacing Brent Bushey.

But his life and example now fuel us all.

To carry forward the work he so inspiringly advanced.

For if not us, CharterFolk …

If not us …

Then who?

CharterFolk, fueled by the life, the example, and the inspiration of Brent Bushey …

… on we go.

A Wedding. An Election. Noble Outcomes. A Beacon of What’s to Come.

Good day, CharterFolk.

I start with a WeddingFolk story.

My niece Isabel got married in Minneapolis last weekend.

Her new husband, Jose, is the art teacher at Beacon Academy.

Fellow teachers – BeaconFolk – were a big part of the wedding party.

I suppressed my insufferability enough to keep a discussion of funding inequity from compromising the cheer.

And it was awesome to hear from still more teachers who love their charter school and couldn’t imagine working anywhere else.

Jose himself attended Chicago Bulls Prep, a charter school operated by the Noble network in Chicago.

A college counselor at Noble recognized his potential and encouraged him to consider applying to St. Olaf, the alma mater of Ember Reichgott Junge, the legislator who got our whole movement going.

Jose applied.

And went.

And met Isabel.

Ten years to the day after their first date, they exchanged their vows.

Nobody was there to celebrate CharterNess.

As well they shouldn’t have been.

But for someone like me, who wears the charter lens everywhere I go, the connection was impossible to miss.

A young person finds a school that helps him see a new path forward.

Opportunity opens.

A life goes in a direction it otherwise would not have.

Yup.

It’s why we do what we do.

Jose’s story is not unique.

Despite all the ridiculous challenges thrown against Chicago’s charter schools in recent years …

… many are nonetheless performing very well.

Charter high schools have become a large portion of the highest performing open enrollment schools in the city.

Now Chicago is heading into one of the most consequential local elections in the country.

The Chicago Tribune has made plain the stakes for the city.

Sadly, over the past decade, recalcitrant status quo interests have imposed one of the most counterproductive education agendas found anywhere in the United States.

That has included electing one of their own, Brandon Johnson, as mayor.

His tenure has shown what happens when a school system …

… and an entire city …

… become captured by interests who force on others stark realities they themselves don’t have to contend with.

Though he has been ranked the least popular mayor in the city’s history …

… Johnson has announced his intent to seek reelection next year.

But the first test comes this fall, when Chicago voters will elect the new school board.

An impressive group of education reform candidates has been assembled. The races are officially nonpartisan, but all of them are Democrats.

Those running to protect the current brokenness have problems of their own.

And the competing visions for public education could hardly be clearer.

INCS Action is putting the charter school community’s heft behind candidates who believe families deserve access to great public schools.

One state over, Indianapolis is pursuing one of the boldest school reform efforts in the country.

An education system that is arguably becoming the fastest improving in urban America.

An effort that has benefited from bipartisan support over the years, with courageous Democrats like Bart Peterson helping set it in motion.

A generation ago, Chicago claimed that mantle.

And Democrats helped lead the way.

Emanuel.

Duncan.

Obama.

Leaders who understood that public education could get better.

That creating new schools and new opportunities was part of how we would get there.

And that protecting the status quo was no substitute for improving students’ lives.

My sense is that the elections over the next six months could mark the beginning of Chicago reclaiming that mantle.

And that legacy.

With more students’ lives sent on completely different trajectories.

And many more Chicago-created success stories like the one my family celebrated last week.

Noble outcomes.

A beacon of what’s to come.