Could teachers veto charter option?
Dispute over wording of Parent Trigger
Teachers would have the power to nullify parents’ demands to restart their low-performing school as a charter school, based on a rewording from a previous draft of the Parent Trigger regulations.
The conflict in language, which infuriated parent advocates and pleased representatives of the California Teachers Association, was one of the more contentious points at a hearing Thursday before the State Board of Education on regulations for the parent empowerment law. By the end of a long day, the reason for the discrepancy between the past and current versions wasn’t clear, and the difference won’t be resolved until the Board votes on the final wording, probably in July. Meanwhile, the change set conspiracy tongues wagging.
At issue is how to resolve a conflict between two laws. The Parent Trigger allows a majority of parents at a school facing its fourth year or longer of federal sanctions for poor performance to choose from among four options for structural reforms. One of those, which may end up being the most popular among parents, is to change to a charter school. Parents can even request a specific charter operator, as parents at McKinley Elementary in Compton Unified, the first to submit a petition, have done.
Most charter schools start from scratch. However, there’s also a state law that allows a district school to be converted to a charter school if half of the teachers there approve. Lawyers for the teachers association argue that the restart option under the Parent Trigger constitutes a conversion charter and so must follow existing law, including the requirement that the majority of teachers give their consent. Only the Legislature, not the State Board, can amend the law, CTA lobbyist Ken Burt said.
But the Parent Trigger’s purpose is to empower parents to change schools, not put obstacles in the way, advocates of the law said. “It’s nonsensical on its face” to also require teachers’ approval, said Gabe Rose, deputy director of Parent Revolution, adding that if teachers had wanted to convert the school to a charter, they already would have done so.
State Board President Michael Kirst implied that he agreed. The charter option under Parent Trigger would appear to constitute a new charter, not a conversion; the circumstances are different, he said.
Earlier drafts of the Parent Trigger regulations omitted a reference to the subsection of the law – Section 47605 in the Education Code – pertaining to a teachers’ vote. But the latest version included it.
Pressed to explain, Department of Education attorney Elizabeth Stein attributed the change to a “drafting problem” and said it was not the Department’s intent to include the teachers’ signatures. This drew applause from parents and community leaders from Compton and Los Angeles, who once again drove all night in a chartered bus to testify at the hearing.
But Chief Deputy Superintendent Richard Zeiger was ambiguous. He said staff copied procedures from the charter conversion statute and took no position on the requirement for teachers’ approval.
The State Board agreed to publish two versions of the Parent Trigger regulations – the Department’s current draft along with changes suggested by other groups – for a 15-day comment period. Alternate wording on the conversion charter dispute, proposed by Parent Revolution, the Assn. of California School Administrators, the California School Boards Assn., and the California Charter Schools Assn., will be among those considered.
Among other changes, the State Board will consider requiring:
- the Department of Education to create a model petition on its website, explaining the options for reform, that parents groups could copy;
- parents groups to translate their petitions in languages spoken by parents in the school;
- the school district to hold at least one public hearing for parents explaining the Parent Trigger options;
- the school district to adopt specific procedures for verifying parent signatures. If they aren’t mandated to take specific steps, school districts could ignore them and violate parents’ rights, as Compton Unified did, Rose and other parent advocates argued.
Question: If the parent trigger charter option constitutes a new charter petition, does that petition then go through the entire charter school process as defined by Ed Code? Or does the trigger bypass the charter approval process?
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Choice opponents might want to be more careful. A surprising number of teachers are not all that familiar with the “teacher trigger” option. As teachers become more familiar with it, through controversies like this, it can sound pretty appealing. In just a few months, my district has gone from steady ho-hum charter stone-walling, to worrying almost exclusively about teacher-led conversions. (Admittedly, I have done everything I can to publicize the latter!) Advocates of School Choice tend to focus, naturally, on the negative impacts that our monopoly districts have on students. But they are often pretty lousy places to work for educators as well. (And we all know about the antiquated overhead burden that central offices impose. Maybe it made sense to divert so much money from the classroom 40 years ago, but now? Not so much.) Our most talented and innovative teachers are discovering that they have a lot to gain from these conversion charters. They are attractive for schools that are imploding and shrinking, because the teachers there might just be able to save their jobs by building a school that parents and students actually want. But teacher-led conversions may turn out to be even more popular in higher-achieving schools, where the “parent-trigger” option is not available, but where the teachers, parents, and students all want to do more than the central office will allow, or can even imagine.
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After a false start to organize a workgroup almost a year ago (said start including a few select folks – you all know who you are), followed by an email from the State Board Executive Director saying the group was disbanded due to concerns raised by “legal”, CDE and the State Board finally agree to convene such a group to address this issue. It meets twice in what I would characterize as mostly deferential in tone to wrangle with difficult, problematic & contentious elements and rather than allow the process to continue – or perhaps to express their dissatisfaction with it – CSBA, ACSA, CCSA and Parent Revolution meet (as a “gang of four”, to paraphrase Eric Premack’s public comments at yesterday’s State Board of Ed meeting) and submit their own language for consideration.
How enlightening. I’m learning more and more about how Sacramento sausage is made every day.
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KSC: The charter option under the Parent Trigger requires the same approval process that all charter applicants go through. No difference.
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California’s state charter laws contemplate two major types of charters. The first is a “from scratch” and the second is a “conversion.”
The federal law, on which California’s state trigger law rests, seems to contemplate this too, by separately recognizing both “conversion” and “reopening” a new school. Specifically, the relevant section of the federal law speaks to interventions “in which an LEA converts a school or closes and reopens a school under a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO), or an education management organization (EMO).”
The various draft regulations that are floating about seem to be fixated on conversion petition issues and seemingly ignore the option to close the old school and start a new school on the site. This fixation on conversion is stupid and gets folks hung-up on whether the parent signatures can substitute for the teacher signatures required under the charter conversion process. Instead, folks pursuing the charter option under the parent trigger also have the option to petition for closure, combined with starting a new charter school. Petitions for new charters can be signed by either parents or teachers.
The regulations could be easily crafted to allow for either option. If parents wanted to work in partnership with a forward-thinking group of teachers to convert the existing school, they could do so. If the parents wanted to start “from scratch,” close the old school and create a new school in its place, they could follow that path.
Yesterday, I noted that the “Gang of Four” draft was a good starting point, but that it would be helpful if the regulations explicitly acknowledged both major types of charter petitions. Some things in life really are simple–and sometimes folks in Sacramento think too much.
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Parents at McKinley did not select the charter. The Parent Revolution organization came in with a preselected charter.
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