Daniel Shoer Roth: Deadly trigger for public schools
BY DANIEL SHOER ROTH
DSHOER@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Florida legislators plan to exploit once again the good intentions of parents and their desire for a fine education for their children to advance lawmakers’ privatization crusade.
In their effort to manipulate the public, legislators are promoting converting traditional public schools to charter schools as a way to empower parents.
The Parent Empowerment in Education bills would allow parents with children in low-performing schools to petition to have a traditional neighborhood school transformed into a charter school, among other options. Might sound fine except parents would not have any major role in the educational process, like choosing the school staff, the subjects in the curriculum, the disciplinary norms, or the school dress code.
Once 51 percent of parents sign a petition, there would be no going back, as long as they obtain authorization from the district’s school board. Or a final determination from the State Board of Education, whose goal of expanding charters is on record.
The advocates’ premise is that parents should have a choice. Yet the “choice” is limited to simply transferring taxpayer funds from public schools to the coffers of the for-profit industry that administers
