"Sacramento High School students along with principal P.K. Diffenbaugh and the California state NAACP visited offices of key legislators negotiating California’s approach to Race to the Top - President Obama’s $4.3 billion education reform challenge. The student delegation came to the State Capitol to voice their opposition to ABX5 8. b The delegation met with representatives from the office of Speaker Karen Bass and ABX5 8 author, Assm. Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica). The group expressed concern for the lack of parental rights and cumbersome rules on charter schools in Brownley’s bill and advocated on behalf of the real reform that will take California’s schools to the top offered in Sen. Gloria Romero’s SBX5 1.
Among the group was 11th grade student senator Lenee Washington who watched the Assembly vote down SBX5 1 in favor of a weaker measure targeting charter schools and backed by the teachers union. These students attend Sacramento High School, a charter school turn-around of a state sanctioned, failing school. In its new form, Sacramento High School ranks in the top 10 percent of similar schools and sends over b70 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges."