This week, we are profiling the extraordinary Debbie Veney, Founder and CEO of Agency Inc.—the “voice for choice” in public education—and former Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Debbie Veney lived with her grandmother in Mississippi until it was time to go to elementary school. Her parents, who lived in Washington, D.C., were young and needed support. But her parents and her grandmother knew that she’d have more educational opportunity in D.C. So when she arrived back in the District, they sent her to a small Catholic school. That choice—which she says changed the trajectory of her life—is also the very heart of her career.
“I got to have a different educational experience which allowed me to have an amazing career and an amazing life,” Debbie said. “I am absolutely positive it is my educational opportunities early in life that put me on a different trajectory, and I am equally positive that there are a lot of people in my neighborhood who were smart and competent, but they didn’t get lucky. This really should not come down to luck.”
After college, Debbie embarked on a career in corporate communications. But in her own time, she was tutoring and mentoring. She felt the tug of educational choice: “The kids reminded me of me. I wish charter schools had been around when I was a little kid. I wonder how much opportunities were lost because we didn’t have those in my neighborhood growing up.”
‘You can change a kid’s life by starting a school’
So, Debbie made a career pivot.
“I was like, you know what, I can fuse these parts of myself together. I can use my other talents in public relations and communications to support an issue that really matters to me,” she said.
She loved the charter school model specifically and the tangible, quick, promising results that charter schools produced. “They stop the kids from falling over the waterfall in the first place. I like that they are open, accessible to any kid. They take every kid where they are and believe that they can be absolutely anything. I love that,” she said. “I love that they are based in communities, they’re close to the families that they serve and anybody with the heart and passion and determination to do the work can do it. You can change a kid’s life by starting a school.”
Debbie has worked for the better part of the last two decades supporting national, state and local organizations devoted to charter schools, including as Senior Vice President at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the national nonprofit that advances the charter school movement. That work, she says, has been “an honor” to do.
A large part of that work has been reshaping the public discourse around charter schools, helping more and more people see the promise of charter schools and, ultimately, opening their hearts and minds to the issue. For her, it’s simple: “If we believe in the American promise of every kid deserving an education, how could you not support charter schools?”
Gaining momentum
While charter schools have often not faced an easy road, Debbie sees a bright future ahead.
“At the moment we’re continuing to gain ground. We’re gaining ground with academic outcomes we see for kids. We’re gaining ground by continuing to grow. We’re a model that parents trust, that they choose. We’re producing exceptional outcomes for kids of color and kids from low-income families,” she said.
This year, that momentum propelled her into launching Agency …
… a nonprofit for strategic communications, community organizing and political power that focuses on providing talent, resources, tools and capacity to partners in the work. She’s also launched Agency Act …
… a 501c(4) nonpartisan organization to amplify the voices of parents and communities who want high-quality K-12 public education choices, and Agency PAC …
… a nonpartisan political action committee.
“We need to see ourselves as bigger than this individual school or this individual thing. We are leaders in education. We have every right to be the major voice when people talk about what education should be,” she said.
To start, Agency kicked off a campaign called Do The Math—running television and digital advertisements in the final weeks of this year’s election. After analyzing both charter school enrollment data and the voting patterns of seven swing states in the 2020 election, Agency spotted that all seven states had enough parents of charter school students to swing the election. There are about 900,000 students enrolled in charter schools in those states.
Debbie contends that charter schools are at an important inflection point. She urges charter school leaders and advocates to “be concerned about putting more points on the board” and reminds that “there is strength in our numbers.”
For her, there is so much more collective potential in the charter school movement that has yet to be harnessed. To get points on the board, and to “bring the full weight of what this movement has to bear,” we have to show that we are greater than the sum of our parts: “Our ability to be able to impact more students and change more lives is exponentially increased when we stand together.”
For her decades of work putting points on the board for kids and families and communities, and for the countless additional points she is sure to put on the board for improved educational opportunity in her new role, we are honored to recognize the extraordinary contributions of Debbie Veney, a shining example of what our movement is all about.