Los Angeles area teachers, parents fight charter school takeover ("Parent Trigger") [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

On December 8, petitions were delivered to Acting Superintendent of the Compton Unified School District, Karen Frison, authorizing McKinley Elementary to be converted from a public into a charter school. If the signatures are approved, McKinley will be taken over by the Celerity Educational Group, a private entity, which will run the school using funds from the public education budget.

Even though there are widespread complaints that petitioners used deception and intimidation to gather their signatures, McKinley is on track to become the first public school in the state of California to be converted to a charter under what has become known as the parental trigger option.

The measure, which was part of the recently passed state Education Code 53300, allows a majority of parents at a given public school to vote to either close it, enact major staffing cuts or convert the school to a charter.

The code was passed, in part, as part of the state’s bid to receive federal money offered under the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative — which the White House has used to impose punitive measures on teachers and advance its privatization agenda.

The code remains in effect despite the fact that state failed to qualify for any of the $4.2 billion offered under the RTTT program.

The Parent Revolution group — which backed the petition drive — was founded by Ben Austin, a state board of education member and a former political aide to ex-President Bill Clinton and Richard Riordan, the former Republican mayor of Los Angeles. The group is backed by billionaire financier Eli Broad and other wealthy opponents of public education.

Parent Revolution claims 62 percent of McKinley parents support the conversion. At a recent PTA meeting, however, the organization was denounced for its intimidating methods.

Jessy Herrera, an active McKinley PTA member, told the meeting how parents were followed by petitioners to their workplaces, laundromats and restaurants. Many parents complained they were repeatedly called and visited at their own homes after refusing to sign.

According to reports, others were told the school would be closed or that they would be deported if they didn’t sign in the case of immigrant parents.

Amid these revelations and with at least 50 parents asking that their signatures be removed, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intervened, turning reality on its head by denouncing the “intimidation tactics” of those who opposed Parent Revolution’s efforts to privatize the school. This was echoed by Mayor Villaraigosa..

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/char-d20.shtml



Opponents of the conversion have noted that the school is among the most rapidly improving in the state with 77-point increase in a two-year period on the state Academic Performance Index.

Parents and teachers who wish McKinley to remain public have charged that signatures were gathered under false pretenses with forms asking parents to sign on to an initiative which would “beautify” the school.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/char-d20.shtml