Our Founder

To a new possible.

Dear Friends of Rooted School Vancouver,

I discovered my "Why" during the semester of my third-grade school year. After coming home from playing with friends, I walked into my home and heard the sound of my mother crying because she and my father were going to lose the home I grew up in. Our neighborhood in Anaheim, California, was gentrifying, and my parents could no longer afford the rise in fees. I was deeply saddened and angered by this. My anger became a seed. From that moment on, I devoted my life to creating the possibility for other children like me to have a better life than their parents.

This potential is what inspired me to found the Rooted School Foundation six years ago and now to apply to open a new public charter school in partnership with Vancouver, Washington by fall 2023. If we are successful, this will be the first charter high school launched in Vancouver history with the mission of providing Youth Personal Pathways* to financial freedom.

After a five-year research period to determine if the Rooted School model is a fit for a community in Washington, our team validated demand for a small, career-connected high school through hundreds of meetings and conversations with community stakeholders in southwest Washington, focus groups with students, and survey data from area family residents.

Acknowledgment from a local business owner came first, followed by the Technology Association of Oregon, community leaders, and southwest Washington business stakeholders, inviting Rooted School to open its school in partnership with the Greater Vancouver community because of the need to overcome a range of challenges and access opportunities.

Unless there is a significant shift in U.S. policy, it would take 228 years for the average Black family, and 84 years for the average Latino family to obtain the same amount of wealth as the average white family. When it comes to asset building and disrupting multi-generational cycles of poverty, this gap has significant consequences for underrepresented communities served by Vancouver Public Schools, whose population is currently 44% non-white.

In consideration of these challenges, which pose a threat to the education and future economic mobility of people of color in the region, Career Connect Southwest aims to increase the number of local students who become local engineers, IT professionals, healthcare professionals, and manufacturing professionals; these fields combined have 1,693 annual projected openings over the next five years. This figure does not include projected openings in similar fields in neighboring Portland, Oregon, a tech sector that is one of the fastest-growing and second-most productive in the U.S.

With southwest Washington and Oregon facing a shortage of homegrown talent, we are preparing our communities in the region while addressing the real possibility that local companies may consider leaving the region in search of talent. This is where we believe Rooted School can work alongside several local stakeholders to pursue transformational work. Currently, no high school in Vancouver offers such an opportunity.

At Rooted, we have a core value called "Community", which we define as not ever forgetting where we come from. Bringing Rooted School Vancouver to life will not be without its challenges. But, along with many friends like you, we believe that we have the power to build the future, for our children and our community. We believe that opportunity begins now.

Thank you for going on this personal pathway of higher learning with us.

Yours in the effort,

Jonathan Johnson

Founder and CEO, Rooted School Foundation