California Parents Start School Revolution

Parents in Compton, California, have had enough. So much so that they’re taking matters into their own hands.

One of that city’s schools, McKinley Elementary, is doing poorly among the lowest. It has 60 percent Latino students and 40 percent black students. Among schools with a similar population it is ranked in the bottom 10 percent. What’s a group of parents to do? Organize, of course. And in California parents have the power to make a difference.

That state recently passed a law called The Parent Empowerment Act of 2010. The law was barely approved in the legislature. Within that legislation is a thing called the “parent trigger option.” Uprisingradio.com has a good piece on the matter:

Under the trigger option a majority of parents whose students are enrolled in a school deemed by the California Department of Education (CDE) as “chronically underperforming,” can petition that school to enact one of four intervention models.

The four models are:

• replacing the school principal.
• exerting some control over staffing and budget.
• closing the school completely and sending students to a nearby, better performing school.
• establishing a charter school in place of the existing school.

The Compton parent group, who call themselves the Parent Revolution (you gotta love that name, it tells a better story than a mundane “parents for better schools” would) want the fourth option: a charter school. They collected signatures for a petition from 60% of the parents of McKinley Elementary and took the petition to the Compton Unified School District.

The reaction at the district and teacher level mirrored the parent’s group name.

…the McKinley staff and teachers unions leveled allegations of intimidation and deception during the effort to amass the required signatures. Parent Revolution countered with its own allegation that the staff spread misinformation about who could be enrolled at the replacement charter school.

So it’s on!

Only the bickering has postponed fixing the school because now the California Attorney General will investigate the allegations thrown back and forth, and that will take time. There’s more. Newly elected governor Jerry Brown has replaced the guy that championed the trigger option, Ben Austin; he no longer sits on the California Board of Education. And, the CBE has yet to ratify the Act that enables the trigger. So it’s all up for grabs.

In the mean time the whole thing is being watched closely by people across the country who have vested interests.  It’s a case study, but I’m sure some people are placing bets.

To listen to the entire Uprising Radio report click HERE.