When the issue of the “parent trigger” first arose, my first question was why the parents of a school should be given the power to “seize control” and give the school to a private corporation? Should the tenants of a public housing project have the same power to privatize their building? How about the patrons of a public library? The riders on a public bus?
I wrote nearly a year ago:
“To me, a public school is a public trust. It doesn’t belong to the students who are currently enrolled in it or their parents or to the teachers who currently teach in it. All of them are part of the school community, and that community needs to collaborate to make the school better for everyone. Together, they should be able to redesign or create or discontinue programs and services. But collaboration is not the same as ownership. The school belongs to the public, to the commonwealth. It belongs to everyone who ever attended it (and their parents) and to future generations. It is part of the public patrimony, not an asset that can be closed or privatized by its current constituents.”
Who “owns” a public facility?
My assumption is that the public owns it, not the consumers or patrons or the users at a given time. The public paid for it, built it, and owns it.
But how can anyone change it for the better?
This article suggests a far better use of a parent trigger: “…how about passing a law that a group of parents can sign a petition that forces the state to allocate the appropriate level of funding to fix a building, supply nurses and librarians, books, provide special education and ELL services, give teachers classroom assistants and teacher leaders to do high quality professional development and to provide schools with teacher leaders to do high quality professional development and planning with teachers to implement best practices.”
I agree with this take, and would add that public trust and collaboration is sullied by involvement of groups or individuals (from outside the area/community served by the school) that would suffer no hurt in dismantling a public school, but would stand to profit from private takeover.
Similarly, why should one person, or appointed officials, like superintendents and school boards in mayoral controlled cities, get to decide whether a school or any other public service is closed and handed over to a private company?
I think anytime there is a deal proferred to privatize a public service that ALL of the affected constitutents should have a say in determining the outcome, such as through a referendum. The process should involve competitive bidding and a reasonable but limited length of time for the privatization should be stipulated in a contract and put to the people.
I’m thinking about why teachers in Chicago said they wanted more time to review their new contract. Not long ago, Daley, the previous mayor, decided to privatize parking and drew up a 75 year contract that he was able to slip through the city council because aldermen had not read the fine print. Parking rates skyrocketed and people are stuck paying unbelievably high parking prices for the rest of their lives –and Daley is now working for the company that brokered the deal.
At least that deal brought in millions of dollars to the city. You don’t hear that about charters, at least in Chicago. The city lets them rent space for $1 a year. That began under Duncan. The irony is that when Paul Vallas was CEO before him, Vallas was championed for saving the city lots of money because he located and took back buildings that CPS had been renting out for decades for $1 a year all over the city. (Can’t recall to whom, but we didn’t have many charters then.) One man’s treasure is another man’s garbage?
Talk about a lack of accountabiity and transparency. Remember, this is the state whose last TWO governors are currently in jail due to corruption. Same old same old. But we rarely have referendums here.
I think this idea would go over really well in Louisiana. Jindal is doing things that not even legislators know is happening.
“I think anytime there is a deal proferred to privatize a public service that ALL of the affected constitutents should have a say in determining the outcome, such as through a referendum. The process should involve competitive bidding and a reasonable but limited length of time for the privatization should be stipulated in a contract and put to the
people.”