“Parent’s Trigger” Goes National
This site has highlighted Ben Austin’s and the Parent Revolution’s fight to install a “parent’s trigger” – the ability for the parents of California school children to demand improvement in their local schools. Now the movement, just taking root in Los Angeles and California, is about to go national.
Under the parent’s trigger law, if 51% of the parents of a failing school sign a petition they can redirect the operation of the school by turning to charter school operators or forcing administrative and staff changes at the school. As Austin wrote here last year, “The concept recognized a truth that school officials often discount: Parents are in the best position to make decisions about what’s right for their kids.”
With the parent trigger now California law, the Wall Street Journal’s David Feith reported recently that state legislatures in five states are considering following California’s example. In fact, Feith reported that, “incoming House Education Committee Chair John Kline (R., Minn.) says that he supports parent trigger, and that Congress "can make sure federal policy does not stand in their way."”
What Will Brown Do?
California is circling the drain and the news keeps getting worse.
With unemployment at 12.4 percent – 2,269,948 people without jobs – it should come as no surprise that the state is upside down in its unemployment insurance fund. The deficit is expected to reach $10.3 billion by the end of the year as the state borrows $40 million dollars a day from the federal government to provide assistance to jobless workers. California must make an interest payment $362 million to the federal government next September. It’s one more obligation that leaves less money for programs like education, laws enforcement and transportation.
Then there is the latest projection from the Legislative Analyst’s Office showing the state with a budget deficit of $25.4 billion.
Just last month, when, with self congratulatory rhetoric, lawmakers concluded the budget for this year, it was obvious to all that it was a sham. I wrote at the time that only those “who had just put their life savings into Florida swampland,” would believe the rosy projections on which the budget was balanced.
California Suggests Suicide; Texas Asks: Can I Lend You a Knife?
Cross-posted at NewGeography.com.
In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.