Post navigation
UTLA Seeking to Take Lead on Changing CA’s Parent Trigger
UTLA President Warren Fletcher
The governing body of the LA teachers union last night voted to seek out a state lawmaker to sponsor legislation that rewrites California’s parent trigger law, which allows for wholesale changes at a school if a majority of parents want them.
The state law, passed in 2010, was used for the first time this year in a handful of Los Angeles area schools, but in describing the rationale of the union’s House of Representatives vote, UTLA PresidentWarren Fletcher said the current law pits parent groups against each other, a “balkanization” that does not serve the interest of all parents at the school.
“The current law is premised on the idea that someone has to be blamed and we have to go after the culprit,” Fletcher toldLA School Report today. “We believe collaboration goes a lot farther than balkanization.”
Fletcher said it’s usually UTLA’s statewide affiliates, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association, that lobby for new laws. But because “so much of the effect” of the parent trigger law can come in LA Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, he said, “we feel the need to take the lead in pursuing it.”
In another vote, the House approved an effort aimed at delaying adoption of an online voting system for elections and policy changes until after the next round of union
