On the Viability of the Parent Trigger

California’s “Trigger Law” has conjured up mixed results, at best.

Parents are getting organized. They are demanding accountability and change from their local schools and educational leaders. Organizing to effect political action, however, has been a mixed bag at best.

The 2010 allows for one of four changes:

1. Replace half the school’s staff. A massive reformation of Miramonte Elementary took place following disturbing allegations of sexual misconduct.

2. Replacing the leadership at the school. True, some principals are not fit for the job of running a school. Much of the time, administrators have to juggle keeping parents, teachers, and district officials happy. Because they do not enjoy the same job protection as teachers, a principal can be peremptorily dismissed or transferred.

3. Close the school altogether. This devastating option was floated against Leuzinger High School three years ago, in which the district leadership instead decided to exchange a large community of staff from Leuzinger to Lawndale and back.

4. Convert the school into a charter. Such was the attempt in Compton last year, which failed in the wake of allegations that parents were forced to sign the petition.

According to a recent LA Times Editorial, charter school operators are loath to take over a trigger school because they must contend with the culture already embedded in the school. The rules that get broken, the amount of tolerance for poor professional or academic performance, the lack of direction, the incompetence of budgeting, these issues and more cannot be swept away by changing the leadership of a school. Starting a new program from the ground up is a more effective option, one which grants leadership greater authority to hire staff, set contractual standards.
Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto is facing a stronger opposition in concerned parents who demand better for their kids. They are not content with any of the four options offered in the Trigger Law. Instead of cosmetic changes in leadership, parents want the power to remove ineffective teachers, which would mean holding individual instructors accountable, pressuring leadership to push against flagging efforts in the classroom. As many leaders prefer holding onto tenure and position instead of positioning students to achieve, administrators have dragged their feet time and again to challenge poor teachers and take on the powerful teachers’ unions.

The state legislature answers to the demands of the unions, in many cases. Then the budget concerns which are eating away at the availability of public instruction severely the steps that a school can take to reform with reframing everything. Because of the cozy relationship that still dominates in Sacramento, education reform with teeth will still remain long in waiting. When the state loses its final fiduciary grip on the government school monopoly, when job-for-life tenure falls away in the midst of crushing pension obligations, the responsible leaders in Sacramento and abroad will have no other choice but to institute a voucher system and decentralizing local control to school districts and their communities.