The Los Angeles Times editorial board sort of endorsed the parent trigger idea, even though the law passed in 2010 has produced no noticeable improvements. The expectation when the law was passed was that only 75 schools would be allowed to implement the “parent trigger,” but less than a dozen have even sought the authority. Efforts to gather parent petitions were spearheaded by a corporate reform group called Parent Revolution, which exists to promote the parent trigger. Parent Revolution received millions of dollars from “reform” foundations, but has produced meager results. There has been no groundswell of popular demand by parents to seize control of their public school.
The idea behind the parent trigger was that parents were yearning to seize control of the school their children attended and to turn it over to a charter operator. The assumption was that the school “belongs” to the parents (who may not be parents in the school next year), but not to the community that built it and funds it.
The editorial says:
The law, passed in haste in 2010 in an effort to empower parents at lower-performing schools, lets them force dramatic change if half or more of them sign a petition. They might demand the replacement of some or most of the staff or vote to turn their school over to a charter operator. They might even close the school altogether. Under the law, the parent trigger is an option only at schools whose scores on the state Academic Performance Index fell below the proficiency mark of 800 and that failed to meet their federal improvement requirements, called Adequate Yearly Progress, for several years in a row. The law limited the trigger option to 75 schools on a first-come-first-served basis to see how it played out; at the time, officials expected the number to be quickly met and expanded.
But that hasn’t happened. There have been only four schools in which parents filed petitions that succeeded in forcing a change. Parents at five more schools used the petition process as leverage to negotiate changes, a much less disruptive process, without ever filing an actual petition.
It is hard to know whether these changes have resulted in improved academic performance because the state has for the moment stopped reporting test scores during the switch to new standardized exams. Yet it’s encouraging to see that parents have some clout, especially low-income parents who felt their children were stuck at problematic schools. That was the original idea: to give deeply frustrated families a chance to take action when educators ignored them.
So, nine or maybe ten schools have used the parent trigger, despite intense efforts by Parent Revolution and major foundations to promote parent takeovers. There is no evidence for improvement in these nine schools. And there is no evidence that students had low scores because “educators ignored” parents.
In Adelanto, where the parent trigger was implemented, the petition was signed by a majority, but many parents did not understand what they had signed and tried to withdraw their signature; a local judge would not permit it. When it came time to pick a charter operator, the parents who had not signed the petition were not allowed to vote. So a minority signed the petition, and a minority of a minority selected the charter. That was not “parent empowerment.”
The Los Angeles Times concludes:
A new trigger law should create stricter guidelines to target truly low-performing schools, and should prohibit school closures through petition. Trigger petitions must be made public, with all parents informed, and the larger community given a chance to be involved. When a petition prevails and parents are considering proposals for changing management of the school, all parents should have a voice and a vote in the decision, not just those who signed the petition.
The parent trigger remains an intriguing if so-far-unproven idea, but the time has come to start imagining a more thoughtful version.
I disagree. I don’t believe that users of a public service should be given the option of privatizing it on behalf of the public that paid for it, past and future. This is akin to allowing riders on a public bus to vote to sell the bus to a private bus company, or letting tenants in public housing vote to sell the project to a developer. A local public school belongs to the community, not to those who are using it this year.
The parent trigger is fairy dust. California should get rid of a bad law and concentrate on proven strategies to improve schools and improve the lives of children and families.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Would you expect less from the charter/anti-union privatizer’s who prefer their taxes didn’t go to “those children” cheerleaders?
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I read the op-ed, too, and it looked like it was heading the right way when it asked basic questiions, but did not go all the way and provide only one obvious answer to each:
L.A.TIMES: “The trigger law raises questions as basic as:
“Who owns the schools?
“Do they belong to the parents whose children attend them or to the district voters and taxpayers who fund them and elect the school board?
“If taxpayers and voters are adamantly opposed to a change that parents support, who ought to get their way?
“Should a bare majority of parents — not all of whom are citizens, by the way — have enough power to close a taxpayer-funded school, forcing the minority of parents to send their children farther from home?”
—————————–
Let’s take ’em one at a time:
L.A.TIMES: “Who owns the schools?”
— The entirety of that community, of course. Everyone whose taxes paid to build it, and whose taxes provide the money for its annual budgets. That community should then be given democratic control and oversight of that school via an elected school board. Parents can and often do have a PTA and/or a Local Schoolsite Council (the names for this vary, depending on the district) which gives it immediate decision-making power and input.
Given that, the PARENT TRIGGER is an abomination diametrically opposed to that answer.
L.A.TIMES: “Do they belong to the parents whose children attend them, or to the district voters and taxpayers who fund them and elect the school board?”
— Well, both, but primarily when it comes to ownership, the latter, which includes those parents as well. Again, parents can and most often do have a PTA and/or a Local Schoolsite Council (the names for this vary, depending on the district) which gives it immediate decision-making power and input.
L.A.TIMES: “If taxpayers and voters are adamantly opposed to a change that parents support, who ought to get their way?”
— The taxpayers and the voters should, particularly if those parents want—or to be precise, were tricked into signing a petition to the effect—to turn over the literal or effective ownership ($1 / year rent) of the physical building and property, and the annual school budgets in perpetuity to a private entity that has no real transparency to the public, no accountability to the public, and which does not educate all of the public—i.e. refuses to educate the most expensive and troublesome students of groups of students (special ed., English language learners, foster care kids, homeless kids, poor behavior kids with defiant or disruptive tendencies,), and refuse or kick out those kids as a way to maximize profits… otherwise known as the “non-profit surplus.” (sorry for the run-on sentence)
That school belongs also to the parents of kids attending that school in 2020, 2030, 2040… and on and on. If ACME CHARTER INCORPORATED seizes the property and the annual budgets in perpetuity, those future parents have no say in the matter.
L.A.TIMES: “Should a bare majority of parents — not all of whom are citizens, by the way — have enough power to close a taxpayer-funded school, forcing the minority of parents to send their children farther from home?”
— Hell–freakin’–NO! That’s what has happened in Adelanto, California, thanks to the Parent Trigger, and what has happened in the districts where charters have taken over, or rapidly expanded—New Orleans, Newark, Washington, D.C., Chicago, etc. Kids in those districts have had to travel long distances to go to school.
The L.A. TIMES asked the right questions, but didn’t take the next step and provide the overall proper answer: PERMANENTLY SCRAP THE PARENT TRIGGER!
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Jack,
Nice analysis. Thanks.
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I agree. I also like Diane’s last paragraph on this post
“This is akin to allowing riders on a public bus to vote to sell the bus to a private bus company, or letting tenants in public housing vote to sell the project to a developer. A local public school belongs to the community, not to those who are using it this year.”
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One point not made is how the trigger school is run. All charters must have a board of directors, but they are NOT elected. Some charters may allow teachers to elect a representative and parents may be allowed to do the same. But the other members are chosen by the charter operator and most certainly make up the majority.
Schools go through changes, charter or not. It’s a very scary thing to realize that parents and teachers at charter schools are immediately giving up their voice in how the school is run now and in the future. If they become dissatisfied, their only choice is to find another school and that requires transportation. Is this fair? NO.
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A common story I hear in these cities—New Orleans, Newark, Washington, D.C., Chicago, etc.— is that parents can no longer send their children to a school within walking distance… the way they previously could prior to corporate reform. It could be from school closings like in Chicago, D.C., and Newark. It could be from charter conversions in those same cities. And now in the Adelanto Parent Trigger school, you have parents having to drive their kids, when prior to the Parent Trigger, those kids could walk.
Here’s a story from Newark where a mom
can’t enroll her son in charter conversion school
next to her home, the one her daughter currently
attends…
It was previously her family’s “neighborhood school.”
Not anymore. “Neighborhood schools” are a
thing of the past in Newark.
You see, that’s “school choice” all right.
The “school chooses” which kids can attend,
and which kids can’t… even this process splits
up siblings… and forces kids to engage in
long commutes.
“Your daughter’s acceptable. But your son…? Meh… not so much…”
http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/julian-cant-go-to-the-school-next-to-his-house-one-newark-and-chris-cerf-wont-allow-it/
My favorite story about corporate reform privatization forcing kids to commute miles to go to their school comes from New Orleans. In the post-Katrina era, then CEO Paul Vallas led charterization and privatization of the New Orleans school district, causing kids to commute several miles to get to the school to which that child was assigned.
Vallas was called to explain this and defend to the New Orleans city council. When one of the councilman criticized him on this, Vallas throw a total tantrum, captured for posterity in a video
“Vallas flips out!” is the title
BACKGROUND: the last part of the video —
01:07 – 01:49
is actually what happened first in the chronology.
It shows what made Vallas flip out. Someone
questions him and asks what percentage of
students now no longer could walk to school,
and had to be bussed far away—as a result of:
1) Vallas closing all the neighborhood
schools and replacing them with charters;
and
2) that he’s been blocking any and all
funding for construction of new buildings,
or refurbishing existing school buildings,
which would allow kids to attend a school
close enough to walk to.
Having established that, the guy calmly
and repeatedly asks Vallas what
percentage of students are now being
bussed, and Vallas won’t answer.
Finally, Vallas concedes that 90% of the
students now can no longer walk to
school, and have to be bussed.
The guy calmly says, “End of discussion.
No excuse for that.”
That’s when Vallas goes off, and that is
what takes place in the first part of the video:
00:03 – 01:03
Watch it again:
00:03 – 01:03
Vallas indeed loses it, screaming like an
egomaniacal banshee about the above
criticisms, “given my record of
accomplishment over the years.” He says
he’s not authorizing any funding to build
new schools, and thus, cut down on
kids having to commute… because
of the “crappy jobs” (tsk, tsk… potty mouth)
that the architects in New Orleans have
done in the past school construction
and renovation.
He then lies about having improved
achievement at every level (New Orleans
schools are ranked dead last—70th out of
70 Louisiana school districts).
Vallas says that he people complaining
about Vallas’ not funding the rehabbing
old school buildings, or the building of
new buildings are just “trying to block
that process” of privatization and
charterization that he has
“accomplished.”
Vallas concludes his tirade with: “I’LL
BE DAMNED IF I’M GOING TO ALLOW
ANYONE BLOCK THAT PROCESS
(of privatization)!!!!”
And then he storms off like a petulant
child, thereby refusing any other tough
questions he might have been asked.
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Also, the Los Angeles Times op-ed mentions the situation in Adelanto—the only place where a parent trigger was ever pulled, thanks to outsiders from PARENT REVOLUTION orchestrating the whole affair. This led to the school’s multi-million dollar building and land, and the schools annual multi-million dollar funding have been given over to a private operator.
Well, according to this article (BELOW), the charter conversion that the parent trigger brought about been a total fiasco… “lawbreakingly unprofessional”, as one teacher vividly put it:
(there’s even an embedded video accompanying the article, with interviews of parents and teachers, each freely giving their real names)
http://capitalandmain.com/features/california-expose/adelanto-report-card-year-zero-of-the-parent-trigger-revolution/
———–
Adelanto Report Card:
Year Zero of the
Parent Trigger Revolution
By Bill Raden
October 16, 2014 in California Expose
Throughout 2011 and 2012, the eyes of the education world were focused on Adelanto, a small, working class town in California’s High Desert. A war had broken out there over the future of the K-6 Desert Trails Elementary School and its 660 low-income Latino and African-American students. When the dust settled, Desert Trails Elementary was gone. In its place was a bitterly divided community and the Desert Trails Preparatory Academy, the first (and so far, only) school in California and the U.S. to be fully chartered under a Parent Trigger law, which allows a simple majority of a school’s parents to wrest control of a low-performing school from a public school district, and transform it into a charter school.
Tiny Adelanto’s turmoil reflects a much larger battle now being fought across America between defenders of traditional public education and a self-described reform movement whose partisans often favor the privatization and deregulation of education. At least 25 states have considered parent trigger legislation and seven of them have enacted some version of the law, including Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. Though funded by tax dollars, the trigger charter is private, meaning it is not bound by many of the rules and much of the governing oversight or transparency of a traditional public school.
At the end of Desert Trail’s inaugural, 2013-14 school year, a group of eight former Desert Trails teachers hand-delivered a 15-page complaint to the Adelanto Elementary School District (AESD), charging Desert Trails with an array of improprieties and its executive director, Debra Tarver, with unprofessional and sometimes unethical conduct.
Among the most serious accusations are charges that administrative chaos at Desert Trails has resulted in both a stampede of exiting teachers and staff; that uncredentialed instructors have taught in its classrooms; and that Desert Trails had an unwritten policy of dissuading parents of students with special learning needs from seeking special education. The teachers also allege that they had to endure a bullying regime in which, they say, they were continually screamed at, spied on, lied to and humiliated in front of parents and their peers by Tarver and her deputies.
Capital & Main spoke with the teachers, four of whom agreed to go on the record for this story. (“The High Desert is a small place and Debbie Tarver has a long reach,” said one teacher who requested anonymity.)
“Not only was it dysfunctional and unprofessional,” says second grade teacher Renee Salazar, a five-year veteran of Los Angeles’ inner-city public schools, “it was law-breakingly unprofessional.”
The teachers interviewed for this story, who were paid about $3,300 a month, claim the school’s extreme miserliness shortchanged teachers and students on basic classroom tools. Over the first year, they said they each spent up to a full month’s salary, and in some cases more, on unreimbursed, out-of-pocket expenses.
“At the start of the year,” recalled kindergarten teacher Bertha Miramontes, “I ended up spending $1,000 because the décor in my classroom, [Tarver] said, was not good enough. I would spend anywhere between $200 to $300 per month to get supplies — writing paper, pencils, construction paper, tissues for my kids’ noses, hand sanitizer, crayons.”
These teachers also say that Tarver, who as executive director of a charter school is paid a salary commensurate to that of a San Bernardino county school district superintendent by both Desert Trails and LaVerne Elementary Preparatory Academy — a combined annual salary of around $200,000 — ordered the student water fountains shut off for the duration of the bitterly cold High Desert winter, rather than pay for overnight heat to prevent the pipes from freezing.
When contacted by Capital & Main, Tarver dismissed the allegations of cheapness, along with the other former teachers’ charges, with which she said she was already familiar, as the sour grapes of “a couple of teachers who have been disgruntled,” though she admitted that Desert Trails’ budget was stretched thin.
“Last year was the first year of a school start-up. You don’t get all your funding right away,” she explained. “[But] every teacher was provided curriculum and everything they needed to operate a classroom. As a matter of fact, they had more than what my teachers had when we started at my other school.”
That other school is LaVerne Elementary Preparatory Academy (LEPA) in nearby Hesperia, where Tarver also serves as executive director. It was LaVerne’s impressive record at posting high assessment scores and its “old-school” model of a well-rounded, classical education that put Tarver’s Adelanto charter application at the head of the shortlist compiled by the Desert Trails Parents Union (the name of the Adelanto Trigger faction) and its sponsor, the Gates Foundation- and Walton Family Foundation-backed Parent Revolution.
Charter school critics, however, charge that such schools often raise their test scores by winnowing out special-needs students. Federal law requires all taxpayer-supported schools to admit students with disabilities. Schools are required to carry out an individualized education plan (IEP) for each disabled student, which could include extra tutoring or a placement in a smaller — and costlier — specialized classroom. Desert Trails’ charter application promised to accommodate the elementary school’s estimated 90 special education students by hiring “a Special Education Coordinator, three full-time special education teachers and five instructional aides.” In its first year, however, the Desert Trails Special Ed program consisted of a single teacher, Special Education Coordinator Tina Fryberger, and a sole classroom aide.
“We weren’t allowed to talk about special education to anyone,” third grade teacher Nani Colmer asserted and claimed she taught kids who needed special ed. “I had students that I really wanted to have a shot at some sort of academic success, and they could not get it in my classroom. I wasn’t allowed to talk about special ed except to say, ‘Go see Debbie Tarver.’ ”
“She told us, ‘Do not tell your parents that there’s any special education testing or assessments available,’” echoed Renee Salazar. “’Do not even talk about special education or testing for any of your scholars. If that ever arises, send them to the office, I will talk to them.’ ”
Tarver denied this. “Everything is done legally and accordingly as special ed is supposed to operate. The teachers are responsible for following a child’s IEP if the child has an IEP. A teacher, and that’s anywhere, cannot diagnose if a child has a disability unless that child has been tested.”
Miramontes said she was told by one parent that Desert Trails staff advised her that her bipolar-diagnosed and severely ADHD, five-year-old twin “would be better served elsewhere.” Miramontes described the kindergartener as prone to extreme rages that included punching, biting, throwing classroom furniture and, on one occasion, trying to scale the playground fence and run away. Eventually he was put in Fryberger’s Special Ed classroom, from where he was then “mainstreamed” into Miramontes’ class for an hour each day during lunch. But the violent tantrums continued and began to trigger outbursts in the child’s twin sister, who was one of Miramontes’ regular students.
“The [children’s] mom would come in my class,” recounted Miramontes, “and she would say, ‘This is what I deal with every day at home.’ She was like, ‘I need help. I’m asking for help from this school and they’re not helping me. I don’t know what to do.’”
According to Miramontes, things came to a head when, during one of the rages, the five-year-old struck school registrar Janice Dominguez. Miramontes never saw the child again but says that she was later told by the disbelieving mother that Desert Trails’ behavior specialist, Anthonie Etienne, requested that she remove her son from the school. When the mother repeatedly asked if the boy was being suspended, she said that Etienne would only reply, “No, he’s not being suspended. He just can’t come back to school.” Etienne has since left Desert Trails and was unavailable for comment.
However, Fryberger confirmed to Capital & Main the outline of Miramontes’ account, but both she and Tarver adamantly denied that the child — or any children — were requested to leave Desert Trails last year.
“That’s false,” Fryberger countered. “Upon discussion with the parents and staff members, [the] mom was in agreement that [her son] would need a more suitable environment to meet his needs. So this was not our decision as far as telling him that he wasn’t welcome or anything. This was a decision that mom thought was best for her kid.”
The teachers say that the parents of at least two other students were also persuaded that their children would be better served elsewhere.
_MG_1774
The most telling outward sign that all was not right at Desert Trails, however, may be its startling turnover in administration and teaching staff. During its first year, teachers say, the charter lost a principal (Don Wilkinson) and a director (Ron Griffin) — both before the Christmas break — its vice principal, six classroom teachers and its behavioral specialist. In addition, only nine of Desert Trails’ first-year teacher roster — or 33 percent — are returnees this year. Desert Trails’ charter promises “less than five percent annual employee turnover.” And, teachers say, Desert Trails seems to be running true to form for the 2014-15 year, with four teachers jumping ship as of this writing — including two from the kindergarten level.
Tarver, who refused to discuss administration turnover, claimed the school’s overall staff retention, which includes uncredentialed classroom aides and office workers, was 92 percent. She attributed teacher turnover to the recovering economy.
“You have over 10,000 [education] jobs that opened up in the state of California,” she insisted, “whereas a lot of schools — not just mine, but many schools — have had a turnover because people wanted to move closer to their home base. . . . That has been the case in every school district, not only in the High Desert but all over California.”
At Desert Trail’s somewhat smaller but demographic twin, Adelanto Elementary School, 16 out of 21 teachers managed to find their way back this year, making for a roughly 76 percent teacher retention rate during the period of economic recovery.
The former Desert Trails teachers characterize the abundance of public school teaching jobs not as their reason for leaving Desert Trails, but as a means of escaping what they say became an increasingly unbearable and capriciously erratic place to teach.
“We were always getting conflicting information from our superiors,” Salazar said. “I was told by multiple different supervisors what things were okay to do. Second grade was told, ‘Do not use Treasures,’ which is the core reading curriculum. It includes phonics, spelling, grammar, writing, components of social studies, science and all of your reading and reading comprehension strategies. So for months at a time, we improvised; we used other support material, we tried to hit every standard to the best possible way that we could without using that curriculum. And two months later, Debra Tarver comes in and says, ‘Oh my god, why aren’t you using Treasures?”
“We were all getting really stressed out,” confirmed third grade teacher Rachel Garvin Villarreal. “There were so many mixed messages from the different parts of administration, and having so much changeover in administration, you never quite knew who your boss was, and you didn’t get the guidance that you wanted.”
“They just told lies to cover themselves over and over and over again, and they contradicted themselves left and right,” said Nani Colmer. “So many things were done in defense of things that they did in the past, and then we paid the price for it.”
One of those lies appears to involve teacher credentialing.
The state’s education code is explicit on credentials. Section 47605(l) requires that “Teachers in charter schools shall hold a Commission on Teacher Credentialing certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold.”
However, the online database of the state’s Commission on Teaching Credentialing (CTC), indicates that for 2013-14 Desert Trails kindergarten teacher Elfie Landa didn’t receive a preliminary Multiple Subject credential until July 24 of this year. (Landa left Desert Trails during the current term.) And the database turns up only an emergency, 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit (issued March 21, 2014) for Honey Welker, a third grade level teaching lead last year, who took over Colmer’s third grade classroom mid-year.
Tarver refused to confirm or deny that she used uncredentialed teachers in the classroom last year, and instead insisted repeatedly that Desert Trails passed a credentialing audit conducted by the Adelanto Elementary School District last April.
Then there is the matter of the composition of Desert Trails’ five-member board of trustees.
As with the publicly elected school board of a traditional school district, which sets the policies that the superintendent must then carry out, the independence of a charter school’s board is a critical check and balance —a guarantee that the voice of parents will be heard and respected by the school administration.
The school’s former teachers who publicly question the Desert Trails board’s autonomy said they were long suspicious of the secrecy that seemed to surround it, noting that, unlike most charters, neither its composition nor its meeting minutes could be found anywhere on the school’s website.
When asked by Capital & Main, Tarver volunteered the board members’ names, adding that the membership was on record at AESD. She also added an unequivocal denial when asked about teacher suspicions that its members were employed by either Desert Trails or LEPA, which Tarver also runs.
However, not only is board member Latrice Brown listed on LEPA’s own website staff roster as a “parent liaison,” but an online search of LEPA’s federal 2012 IRS Form 990 tax return revealed that two Desert Trails board members are listed as LEPA company officers — Marnella Mayberry as president and Ruby Ford (who also works as a tutor at both schools) as vice president.
What mostly angered the ex-Desert Trails teachers, however, was what they characterized as the cumulative betrayal of the education promised to the parents and children of Adelanto.
Renee Salazar said she was drawn to Desert Trails by Tarver’s sales pitch about unlimited resources and classroom freedom, and the opportunity to innovate curriculum.
“For a while, at least, we had that,” Salazar said. “But all that changed after the winter break when the school began ramping up for the spring assessment testing. We had a director that was telling us, ‘You can create your own curriculum.’ We were told there wasn’t going to be a test-prep focus. But from February on, there was.”
Salazar said the pressure fell heaviest on the second grade, which the administration considered the “giveaway year” — the grade that could usually be relied on to bring in a high score and help raise the school’s overall Academic Performance Index. The second grade class of 2013-14, however, was measuring as low as kindergarten level for math and language arts.
“We were told, ‘You have to get their test scores up,’ Salazar remembers. “Our vice principal was told, ‘If their test scores don’t come up, you won’t have a job.’ So they sat all of second grade down and said, ‘You’re no longer allowed to teach writing, you’re no longer allowed to teach social studies, science — anything else. No P.E. You’re only to [teach] language arts and math. This is the schedule that you’re to do it on, these are the only materials that you’re allowed to use, this is how you’re to do it.’”
One thing on which the two sides do agree is that Desert Trails did post test-score gains.
“We had 47 percent of our scholars who [rated] proficient and advanced,” Tarver said of the California Standards Test results for 5th grade science, “and we only had a 15 percent rate of those that were below and far below [state standards], which is a huge difference from the 30 to 40 percent that school had for the past 10 years.”
More comprehensive, schoolwide scores, she said, wouldn’t be released by the school for another month.
For the ex-teachers, it is a tarnished achievement that came at the terrible price of shattered morale and the stability and consistency that underpin a quality education.
“It wasn’t the holistic, well-rounded education that they were promised,” Salazar asserted. And [teachers leaving] is difficult. It’s hard on the scholars and it’s hard on their families.”
At least one parent who spoke to Capital & Main on the condition of anonymity agreed.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” this parent said. “I feel like so many teachers have left. There’s been, like three principals that left, and every time you ask somebody about it, they just make it seem like it’s no big deal. But when kids are in school, consistency is important.”
“When teachers are able to stay multiple years,” Rachel Garvin Villarreal noted, “they become part of that community and make an even stronger, healthy school culture that over time grows. . . . And even though we had invested so much, I guarantee you, we would have invested so much more.”
“We’re not trying to get even,” Miramontes said of the teachers’ complaint. “We just really care about those kids and just want the best for them. I mean, they don’t even have soap and paper towels in the bathroom! Kids deserve better than that.”
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Thanks Jack for this ‘on target’ assessment of parent trigger as it has been applied to Adelanto…and other pertinent info. Excellent reporting.
Former State Senator Gloria Romero, of Orange County, keeps beating this dead to dying horse issue, trying to revive it in her county. She wrote this flawed law at the direction and with the help of Ben Austin who followed the direction of his funders and bosses, the Waltons, Eli Broad, the Wassermans, and a few other billionaires who seek to make America’s public schools a huge free market investment opportunity . The trigger as applied by PRev instigators, was applied with so much manipulation and intimidation of signers of the petition, that there still might be legal avenues to ameliorate or rescind it.
Ben Austin, who now works directly for Eli Broad, and is charged (we have read) with attempting to implement not only this charter push, but also is lobbying for clones of the California Vergara case, nationwide. He is joined in this nefarious Broad scheme by former Supt. John Deasy, who also now works full time for Broad, even though he is under deep investigation by both the FBI and the SEC.
When Parent Revolution found that there was so much push back in LA County, they changed their focus to Orange County, and have made an inroad by converting one school using this abomination of a law that allows a few people who are parents at a school for a finite time, to decimate that school in perpetuity by turning it over to the Rheeformers.
As to Paul Vallas, one only needs to do a search of Ravitch archives to see what a scoundrel he is. Eli’s boys and girls, trained at his Broad Academy to be CEOs of districts and of charters, generally have a low standard of academic achievement themselves, and a low moral compass as well. See Byrd-Bennett in Chicago, Vallas, Deasy, and others who are now, or have been, under investigation for all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors.
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addendum…and the LA Times which is run by a major charter promoter and close associate/friend of Eli Broad, does as it always chooses…to waffle to the side of the billionaire investors. The public must always take their editorials and reporting with a huge grain of salt.
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Speak of the devil…this just hit my inbox. This woman who wrote the distorted parent trigger law for California never stops trying to force it on school districts, with much misinformation and little logical, critical thinking. She is a well paid ideologue and supporter of the Rheeformers. I will dig up the entire column and post it.
Ellen
—–Original Message—–
From: Anaheim Blog
To: matt
Sent: Tue, Aug 4, 2015 11:34 pm
Subject: [Anaheim Blog] Gloria Romero: “Anaheim District Should Stop Thwarting Parents
Anaheim Blog has posted a new item, ‘Gloria Romero: “Anaheim District
Should Stop Thwarting Parents’
Former state Senator Gloria Romero, who now
assists parents trying to assert
their rights in the face of hostility from the
public education establishment,
published a column this past Sunday in the OC
Register calling on the Anaheim
City School District to cease its war on the
group of parents seeing to convert
Palm Lane […]
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Regarding Palm Lane parent trigger efforts:
http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2015/02/20/parent-trigger-fails-anaheim-elementary-school/
This is interesting.
At the school board meeting where the trigger was denied, the anti-Parent Trigger parents, in sworn affidavits, testified—under oath and under penalty of perjury—that they were “were coerced with gifts of after-school tutoring and iPads for their signatures. These affidavits were delivered to the trustees this evening.”
The pro-Parent Trigger folks responded with “11 affidavits from petitioners who swore they did not offer any gifts for signing.”
If the 11 petitioners providing the affidavits denying the accusation include some or all of those named by the parents as the ones who offered gifts… then there can be only one conclusion.
Somebody’s lying.
Here’s another interesting tidbit:
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“Then it was noted that there was no separate document added to the petition identifying the option for restart which, according to the law, must be established when the petition is turned in. It was also found that the Spanish version of the petition did not include information about the restart, so the Spanish speaking parents were not alerted in the petition about the consequences of signing.”
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Hmmm… unlike the offering gifts stuff, this accusation not a disputable, “he said-she said” point of contention. The Spanish version of the petition is on paper, in black’-n-white, as they say. Either it includes all legally required details—i.e. your public school could very well be privatized—or it doesn’t. And the Spanish petition apparently doesn’t.
But it ain’t over yet…
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“Even as those about rejoiced this decision, it was noted by Board President, Bob Gardner, that the petitioners have 60 days to make corrections and the district has 25 days after that to make their decision.”
I love the right-wing, pro-privatizaion slant of O.C. REGISTER’s editorial board’s take on these events.
This may as well be a press release that PARENT REVOLUTION dictated to them.
Note the corporate reform, privatizer jargon used… “defenders of the status quo”…
O.C. REGISTER Editorial Board:
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“The first attempt at pulling the parent trigger in Orange County was never going to be easy, as defenders of the status quo have attempted to make ‘school choice’ a disreputable phrase. But Palm Lane is a school – one of many – in need of real reform. We hope it will be a catalyst for other Orange County parents to take control of their children’s educational futures.”
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There’s not the slightest semblance of balance or objectivity—i.e. like including the details mentioned in the K-12 News Network coverage (in the above post):
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/school-651705-parent-parents.html
Could we please bring back the days when we had a free press in this country?
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Jack…this is pretty much what PRev did in Adelanto, and also at Wiegand.
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