A reader in Washington State writes:
In Washington State, where we don’t have charters, we are fighting a charter initiative. It includes the MOST aggressive trigger in the U.S. It would allow an approved charter to circulate a petition to parents OR teachers at a school and, if a majority sign, the charter takes over, building and all. This applies to ANY existing school, failing or NOT. They could take over ANY school. Say you have an elementary school with 30 teachers and 16 sign the petition. An ENTIRE school community is flipped because of 16 people. It is jaw-droppingly crazy and we are not going to stand for it here. The line in the sand against charters and trigger petitions starts here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s well known that California has a parent trigger law which, I believe, may have been the first in the country. It was approved when the majority of the CA State Board of Education was made up of charter owners and supporters who were appointed by then governor Schwarzenegger. Now, we’re stuck with it.
We also have what should be called a “teacher trigger”. No one has ever used this term as far as I can remember, but that is exactly what it is. It mirrors the parent trigger in that at least 50% of the school’s permanent teachers can sign a petition to convert their traditional school into a charter.
It’s interesting to note that there have been several examples of the “teacher trigger” in LAUSD. Locke HS is a well known example. That conversion was extremely contentious as were others. Just like the parent trigger, the teacher trigger pits teachers against each other. Often, the veteran teachers fear the loss of health benefits which, in LAUSD, they lose after 5 years as a conversion charter. They also lose their seniority rights if they decide to return to an LAUSD traditional school, and are no longer part of the LAUSD health program, including lifetime benefits which may have been originally promised but then eliminated.
The point here is that the conversion to a charter can seem to be a great idea initially, but it always happens in concert with the present administration. Once the charter conversion happens, parents, teachers and students lose most of their ability to bring complaints to anyone other than the school itself. This also happens with the parent trigger. Once a school is given over to a charter, the parents, teachers and students lose many of their rights to take serious complaints to the authorizers of their school. In other words, they are stuck with what they get.
Please note: LAUSD also allows “affiliated charters” which are a hybrid model in which teachers retain their rights and district health benefits.
It may be helpful to know that the Washington State chapter of PTA and the Washington League of Women Voters have come out in opposition to Washington’s charter schools initiative.
what is equally helpful to know is that the union leadership in WA. is fond of using the right wing’s talking points to supposedly debunk the talking points, which means you’re on the right wing’s turf, which means you’re already losing. How to lose nobly is something roger ailes used on Dems and unions during Raygun, and something too many elected WA. Dems and too many WA. union leaders REFUSE to figure out.
we are plagued with Gate$ A$tro – Turf$ who excel at playing this game to win & we are burdened with “leaders” who are playing by the rules of ’84, ’88, ’00, ’04, ’10 … with little more than “We’re Lessor Of Two Evils!” as their trump card.
This is going to be a fight.
rmm.
This all sounds like some kind of nightmare out of a Kafka novel, just hideous.
What’s truly vile is the deception and outright lies of the Privatizers who paid people to collect signatures—at roughly $6 per signature—to get this horrific measure on the November ballot.
As part of their “talking points”, they keep saying how “moderate” and “modest” and “small” a change this will be. How it will be so “careful” and “centrist” in its approach…while they’re holding the Molotov Cocktail in their other hand, behind their back.
However, once this information about the “Radical Trigger” gets out to the voters—and how any private “education company” can bribe teachers and/or parents to sign a document that would effectively destroy their school—this odious “charter/trigger” law will not only lose, but we’ll ram a stake through its heart and collectively stomp in back into the ground.
It’s vile. And it’s arrogant. We parents are going to spread the word on this and call out the shills who are pushing it, forcing them to answer some questions.
No Charters. No Vouchers. No Triggers.
No Privatization
Free and Universal Education For All Children. No Exceptions.
John Foster, this WA teacher thanks you . People in our state are going to have to hear from parents like you to make this hit home. I hope you are organizing and making plans. I think you are right: once news of this trigger his the citizens of our state, the initiative is going down.
We’ll speak loudly and often. I promise. This is just the beginning.
BUT, we also need our teachers to stop being so quite, so defensive, so intimidated. It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy when that happens. Look at Chicago today; that should tell us all something.
The I-1240 folks are the ones who need to be on the defensive! The Privatizers are the ones who are afraid to say anything in public, knowing that the truth will sink their ship. The billionaire funders—NONE of whom have children in public schools—think they can fund these ersatz “education” groups like LEV, DFER, SFC, SF…(they’re ALL vile and funded by the same fronts)—and then sit back and just pull the puppet strings.
Do the 1% know best? Should the people who never have to choose between mortgage payments and utility bills be telling US what is best for our schools and our children?
This is NOT a battle between “reformers” and the “status quo”. Nor is it a battle between “teachers unions” and “taxpayers”.
It IS a battle between Citizens (both parents and non-parents) and Privatizers. Citizens want free and universal education for all children; privatizers want “charter” schools for some and “public” schools for everyone else who they deem “unworthy”. But the one thing all schools will have in common, if the Privatizers succeed with their awful plans—is private ownership and management, with fat profits, coming directly out of our education dollars.
teachers are quiet, defensive and intimidated because they think they will lose their job. There is a culture of intimidation developing and while I agree it needs to stop, I don’t think most teachers are willing to speak up. They will do what they always do……stick their heads in the sand and hope it goes away.