In January, parents in the Southern California town of Adelanto made history by becoming the first in the country to pull the trigger — the parent trigger, that is. That’s the ominous-sounding term for a state-legislated mechanism that enables parents to take control of struggling schools.
If legislators in Tallahassee get their way during the current session, Florida parents could do the same thing soon. But, unlike the case of Adelanto’s Desert Trail Elementary, which was turned into a charter school, troubled schools singled out in the Sunshine State would be taken over by a for-profit corporation.
The biggest supporters of the Florida legislation are American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group that invites state lawmakers to implement policies favorable to business, and the Jeb Bush-founded Foundation for Florida’s Future, an education policy nonprofit that has earned the former governor both plaudits and scorn.
The biggest opponents, not surprisingly, are members of the public school establishment — teachers, school board members (who are cut out of the process), and union officials. The idea of handing over public schools to a for-profit entity is anathema to them.
But there’s another group opposing parent trigger that might be less expected: Parents. For a bill that’s supposed to be about empowering them, precious few parents support the bill and a whole lot more oppose it.
Florida is one of a handful of states (along with Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Tennessee) debating whether to enact a parent trigger law this year, joining California and six other states that have already approved such legislation. Miami Republican Carlos Trujillo is backing the bill (officially called Parent Empowerment) in the Florida House.
The bill would give parents a voice in turning around their child’s failing school by allowing them to recommend one of four federally mandated options to their local school board. It would only impact “F” schools, and would require districts to report annually to parents if their child’s teacher is teaching out of field or has received two annual evaluations of unsatisfactory.
But when Trujillo appeared before the House Choice and Innovation Subcommittee earlier this month for the bill’s first public hearing, he made a point of saying what the bill was not about.
“I’m not here for ALEC,” he insisted. “I’m not here for Jeb Bush.”
Despite Bush’s somewhat clumsy return to the national stage in recent weeks, his influence on education in Florida is as pronounced today as it was when he was governor over six years ago. And FFF is standing solidly behind parent trigger.
In an email message, Deputy Communications Director Allison Aubuchon calls the bill a proactive mechanism for parents.
“This bill will give moms and dads a voice on important decisions regarding how to turn that school around,” writes Aubuchon. “Parents, the only ones motivated purely out of love for their children, deserve the right to have a seat at that table.”
But the parents of Fund Education Now aren’t buying it.
That’s a group formed six years ago by three Orlando moms who grew concerned about large education cuts in their Orange County school district.
The group’s Kathleen Oropeza says, “It’s disturbing to see a corporate agenda that’s willing to use the love a parent has for a child as a weapon against a neighborhood school.”
At the bill’s second reading last week, 13 people who said they were parents came out to criticize the bill. One woman spoke in support of it. During the bill’s third reading, 20 different parents commented, this time split down the middle.
Fund Education Now maintains in fact that not one “legitimate” Florida parent group embraces the legislation.
CL asked Fighting Florida’s Future to put us in contact with a parent, any parent, who supports parent trigger. They couldn’t do that, instead providing a statement from Pastor Alfred Johnson from the Church of Preparation in Tampa. He has served in inner city communities for 17 years, and says, “We as a community must be willing to explore every successful measure for improving the educational delivery system to our children.”
As with other education reform issues, such as school choice, parent trigger isn’t a solely Republican cause. Some Democrats, particularly black lawmakers seeking improvement in public schools, have spoken up for the measure, such as former state Senator Al Lawson from the Tallahassee area. At this month’s hearing, he said parents with kids in failing schools feel like they don’t have any power, and parent trigger “would force people to do a better job of educating our kids.” Lawson is also now a lobbyist whose clients include Jeb Bush’s foundation.
But critics of parent trigger say that parents do have other options besides the for-profit route.
Hillsborough County School Board Chair April Griffin says that if a parent doesn’t like a neighborhood school, the school system offers choice schools, magnet schools, IB schools. And if a parent isn’t satisfied with those options, they can then enroll their son or daughter in a private or charter school (although, admittedly, private school would not be financially feasible for most low-income families).
Current law in Florida also allows for public schools to be “converted” to charter schools if an application is made by a parent, teacher, principal or district school board member, and is approved by a majority of the teachers and a majority of the parents. Polk County was the home of the first such school in the state, and others have followed.
There are 43 charter schools in Hillsborough County, and approximately 580 in Florida. That’s just a sixth of the total number of public schools in the state. At this month’s hearing Representative Trujillo said that right now there are 27 “F” schools in the state’s public education system, and 18 “F” ranked charter schools.
With thousands of public schools in the state, those numbers indicate that charter schools in Florida are failing at a much higher rate than public ones. Which is why officials with the state’s biggest teachers’ union, the Florida Education Association (FEA), say they’re dumbfounded by a recent Department of Education report that showed charter students outperforming their peers in traditional public schools.
Using data collected from the 2010-2011 school year, the report compared the two groups in three categories: the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test [FCAT]; achievement gaps between white and minority students; and learning gains made by students.
“I don’t know who prepared that report, who did the research … but that’s not happening anywhere else in the country,” says Jeff Wright, policy director for the FEA, who insists that at best charter school students may be on an equal path with public school children — but with a huge caveat attached. He says when you factor in that charter schools can be more discriminating in whom they accept, “We’re outperforming them by leaps and bounds. When you put in the poverty issues, where these kids came from and everything else, we way outperform them. If you let me pick my kids I can outperform you any day.”
Another criticism of parent trigger is that parents who get the required 51 percent of signatures on a petition can take it directly to the state Board of Education, completely bypassing their local school board. That irks those who think it’s a complete contradiction of the GOP maxim emphasizing local control.
But their biggest concern is the specter of a public-school corporate takeover.
So it’s worth noting that the man who spearheaded the parent trigger movement is against corporate control, too.
Contrary to myth, parent trigger was not concocted by nefarious businesspeople and then passed on to Republican lawmakers at an ALEC conference.
In fact, the movement’s origins can be traced to a Democratic politician: Ben Austin, a deputy mayor to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and an adviser to Rob Reiner who also served in the Clinton administration. Austin worked with members of the California Legislature to get a bill passed in 2010, when the state became the first in the nation to pass a parent trigger law.
Austin’s group is called Parent Revolution. Its first attempt to convert a school — Compton Elementary — ultimately failed after the school board there successfully challenged the validity of some of the parent signatures on the original petition.
Parent Revolution spokesman David Phelps said his group learned from that experience that they must have the full support of parents.
The next school to invoke parent trigger was the city of Adelanto in the Mojave Desert, where there have also been legal challenges. But those have been cleared away, and the first charter school to be created after parent trigger is scheduled to open this summer.
But Parent Revolution, which has consulted with officials from Florida, requires something the Tallahassee bill does not: The charter school replacing the public school must be a nonprofit.
In an op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press last year as Michigan was contemplating its own version of parent trigger, Austin wrote, “What legislators must not accept is any legislative provision allowing public schools undergoing conversion to be administered by a for-profit charter operator. Likewise, allowing operators with poor track records (many of whom are for-profits) to run a ‘triggered’ school is not the kind of quality option that parents deserve.” Otherwise, he concluded, the bill would be a “travesty.”
But parent trigger in Florida is very much about converting a public school into a for-profit company.
Will the bill pass? Polk County’s Paula Dockery was one of the moderate GOP senators who helped kill the bill in 2012, but she was term-limited out of office last year and is now watching the legislative session from the sidelines. She tells CL, “Unfortunately, its chances of passing are almost certain. It would be up to the governor to veto and I don’t think he will unless there’s a mass outcry from teachers and parents.”
In 2010, there was a huge outcry by teachers and parents against what was known as SB 6, the merit pay bill for teachers. Ultimately Governor Charlie Crist, already on the outs with the RPOF, vetoed the bill, thrilling both constituencies. But a year later virtually the same bill was passed and signed into law just weeks into the 2011 session.
Now with Governor Scott on the outs with his party — for giving $2,500 one-time bonuses to teachers, among other offenses — might he “do a Crist” as he tries to win more teacher love? The FEA’s Jeff Wright says he’s not even thinking about that yet, believing that a year ago nobody thought parent trigger would lose.
The Senate companion to Trujillo’s bill in the House, sponsored by Lakeland’s Kelli Stargel, had yet to be introduced in any committee hearings.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2013.