Author: Ben Austin

In a huge victory for parents in Los Angeles and throughout California, the
California State Board of Education approved emergency regulations
for the Parent Trigger. These regulations, which lay out clear and common
sense rules and guidelines for how parents can go about using the Parent
Trigger, were critical for empowering parents to actually use this new law.
The parent trigger is an historic new law that allows parents to transform
their failing neighborhood school simply through community organizing.

Specifically, if half the parents sign a petition, they can trigger radical
changes, including bringing in new leadership and staff, or converting their
school into a charter school.

For the first time in the history of america, parents now have the power to
transform schools that have been failing neighborhoods and communities for
generations — and in doing so give their children the education they need
and the future they deserve.

Last week’s LAUSD school board vote was a stark reminder of the lesson we have all learned many times before – parents can’t rely on politicians to advocate for their own children.

In a remarkable show of political cowardice, several LAUSD school board members overrode Superintendent Cortines’ thoughtful recommendations and removed three of the highest quality charter schools in America from having the opportunity to serve children. In an even more stunning display of the backroom deal making, the school board voted to remove high-quality charter operator ICEF from the new Barack Obama Middle School after exactly 0.0 seconds of debate.

What started six months ago as an historic break from a failed past, was exposed Tuesday as the same old business-as-usual politics played by grown-ups, for grown-ups, about grown-ups that got us into this mess in the first place.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times

Let me tell you about my recent trip to Sacramento. It is a story about why we need a revolution.

Earlier this month, Senate leaders introduced a "parent trigger" into California’s "Race to the Top" education reform legislation.

Under the policy, parents at a systemically failing school could circulate a petition calling for change. If 51% of the parents signed it, the school would be converted to a charter school or reconstituted by the school district, with a new staff and new ways of operating. 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.

Last week, the parent trigger legislation moved to the Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica). Thousands of parents sent letters, made calls, staged protests and showed up to testify before her committee about the importance of parents taking back power over our schools.

It isn’t every day that implementing a series of common sense reforms to fix
our schools can also infuse our cash-strapped state with hundreds of
millions federal dollars. President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative,
however, presents our state with a unique opportunity to not only transform
our antiquated public education system for the 21st century, but also to
have it paid for by the federal government.

The Race to the Top reforms being presented in SB 1 represent an almost
textbook definition of the term “win win,” and our legislature must not
squander this opportunity.

As parents examine the package of reforms being proposed, they will likely
be shocked to find these sensible policies do not already exist in
California. SB 1 would pave the way for Districts to reward their best
teachers, making sure they can stay in the classroom where they are
desperately needed. It would promote the use of student achievement data as
a factor when evaluating teachers, so we can finally know which teachers are
producing the biggest student gains.

Nearly three thousand parents showed up at the LAUSD downtown headquarters yesterday to demand change, and they got it.  In the form of a groundbreaking school choice resolution, authored by Yolie Flores Agular.  It will help us to revolutionize hundreds of failing schools throughout the District, and turn the new school construction program into an engine of reform.  This was a watershed moment, not just because of the transformative nature of the policy itself, but also because of how we won the vote.  We won because of parents.  We stood up, stood together and screamed at the top of our lungs: we are fed up, and we aren’t going to take it anymore!

And we organized ourselves into a political force more powerful than the defenders of the status quo.  We stand for one thing, and one thing only: our children.  And we are motivated by one thing, and one thing only: our love for them.  This was a great day, both because of what we did, and how we did it.

Next week, the school board of the LA Unified School District will be voting on one of the most transformative proposals to ever come before it. The Public School Choice Resolution, authored by Yolie Flores-Aguilar, would allow outside operators- community non-profits, charter operators, and others- to submit proposals to run LAUSD schools. The competition between outside organizations and the District would ensure that every community got the best possible school, and incentivize the District to finally learn how to run great schools. Open for proposals would be the 50 new schools currently being built by the District, as well as existing schools which have already been designated by the Federal Government as failing.

This resolution has been endorsed by the LA Times, the Daily News, and LA Opinion, along with dozens of community leaders and organizations. It has the potential to harness proven and successful school models, and bring badly needed innovation to the 700,000 student LAUSD system. Unfortunately, many entrenched interests who benefit financially from the status quo have been fighting tooth and nail to stop this resolution.

“Carve deeper next time.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, that’s precisely what Los Angeles Unified School District teacher said to his student standing before class to explain why he’d been absent, and why he had scars on his wrists. “Carve deeper next time.”

What do you think happened to that teacher?

You guessed it: He wasn’t fired. He wasn’t prosecuted. He wasn’t even disciplined. The LAUSD commission charged with firing teachers concluded that Polanco was trying “to defuse the awkward situation.” He was sent to teach at East Valley High School in North Hollywood. And that’s what he’s doing today. Teaching our kids. Nobody seems to know what happened to the child.

That’s why we need a revolution at the LAUSD.

Last Saturday, parents from all across Los Angeles gathered in Boyle Heights to stand up, stand together, and speak with one voice that the time is now to take back our schools from the special interests and the bureaucrats who benefit from the status quo at the expense of our own children.

We formed the Los Angeles Parents Union to declare our independence from these special interests, and to take back our schools for our parents, our children and our future. Last Saturday, the Parents Union fired the opening salvo in the Parent Revolution because we believe that all children are created equal, and that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of the Parent Revolution is to secure these rights for every child in Los Angeles.

Even though I live in Benedict Canyon on the Westside — miles away, and in some ways worlds apart, from East Los Angeles – I told the assembled parents in Boyle Heights that I stood with them on that day for one simple reason: my own daughter, Fiona. That’s because what we did on that day, in that neighbourhood, will have ripple effects across geographic boundaries, socioeconomic boundaries, racial and ethnic boundaries and all the other walls that separate us in Los Angeles. By standing together as parents, we will transform schools from Boyle Heights to Benedict Canyon to every school in every neighbourhood across Los Angeles.