With ‘Parent Trigger’ laws on the ropes, three overhauled schools reopen in Los Angeles
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LOS ANGELES—When classes resume in Southern California in the coming weeks, three public schools will be the first in the nation to reopen under new management spurred by a controversial education law dubbed the “parent trigger.”
Parent Esmeralda Chacon is excited that 24th Street Elementary, just west of downtown Los Angeles, is bringing back a pre-kindergarten program and partnering with a local charter school operator. Parent Llury Garcia at Weigand Elementary in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles—where the principal has been ousted and 21 teachers subsequently asked for transfers—hopes her 8-year-old daughter will become a better reader. And Cynthia Ramirez expects to have more say in setting discipline policy and curriculum at her fourth-grade son’s school, Desert Trails Preparatory Academy in the desert town of Adelanto, now that it has been taken over by a small nonprofit charter operator .
At Weigand Elementary School in Los Angeles, 61 percent of parents signed a petition to replace the school’s principal under California’s controversial “parent trigger” law. (Photo courtesy Parent Revolution/Derrick Alan Everett)
These parents helped lead the so-called “parent unions” that ran campaigns to overhaul their children’s respective schools with guidance and financial backing from Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles nonprofit formed to promote California’s Parent Empowerment Act. Known as the parent trigger law, the legislation allows a majority of parents at an underperforming school to force major changes ranging from replacing the principal and half the staff to ceding control to a charter operator.
When the law was passed in 2010, Former California State Sen. Gloria Romero, its author, compared it to the civil rights movement five decades before, and envisioned bipartisan support for parent trigger laws spreading to state legislatures across the nation. The 2012 Hollywood movie “Won’t Back Down” aimed to build legislative momentum, but the box office flop only seemed to draw more
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