"Parent Trigger Law" Could Trigger Change Around The Nation
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Parents at McKinley Elementary are fed up. Their children have gone to a dismal school for years, they say, and the district has done nothing about it. So they're taking matters into their own hands with help from a new California law that allows parents to take control of a failing school.
It's called the "Parent Trigger law," and it was narrowly passed by the California legislature earlier this year. It applies to the lowest performing schools in California, allowing parents to make drastic changes to a school if they can get over 51 percent of all the parents to sign a petition.
Marlene Romero is one of those parents who's trying to change McKinley, where only 19 percent of 3rd graders read at grade level.
"We are completely fed up," said Romero. "We’ve been told to wait every year and nothing changes."
Sixty-one percent of McKinley's parents voted to have the school taken over by a local charter school, just one of the options the Parent Trigger law allows. In addition, parents can vote to have the school closed, have it "transformed" by hiring a new principal, do a "turnaround" where much of the staff is hired and