One of the most popular classes at 20th Street Elementary School has 43 dedicated students who come twice a week.

They’re all parents.

The parents of this 600-student school just south of downtown Los Angeles come here to learn English. They do projects for teachers. They discuss school issues. Their children even help them with their English homework. And it’s all taking place at one of the most active rooms on campus: the parent center.

LA Unified officials, board member Monica Garcia and about 50 parents gathered Tuesday to dedicate the new parent center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and student performances. The ceremony also marked a healing of sorts among divided parents who had twice moved to use a “parent trigger,” a California law that allows parents to take over a failing school.

District officials and the school board have come to realize that encouraging more parent centers on school campuses leads to more community engagement, higher attendance and eventually better test scores and higher graduation rates.

Nearly half of the school sites — more than 500 — at the nation’s second-largest school district have at least one classroom dedicated specifically as a parent center. Many of them have computers, Internet, desks, materials, copy machines and other supports for parents to use during and after school and sometimes on weekends.

This year alone, 70 parent centers opened at district schools and 40 more will open before the end of December, said Rowena Lagrosa, senior executive director of parent, community and student services. The district has a request before the school board for 155 more centers.

The 20th Street parent center.

“These centers are a game changer, and it results directly in improved classroom attendance,” Lagrosa said. “Getting our parents involved with the school is integral to getting our children college-bound, and as we see here, it starts at the elementary level.”

The costs per school for a new parent center run from $65,000 to $100,000, according to Lagrosa, who added, “Some of our schools need a little more TLC.” The district provides a cart with 20 Chromebooks, like those already provided to schools for testing.

“This is a great space for parents to come together and work together now,” said Karla Vilchis, who is on the English Language Advisory and School Site councils. She recalled the contentious years when parents tried to take control of the school. “Everyone has the desire to get the best education for our children.”

The school’s principal, Mario Garcielita, welcomed the parent center and acknowledged the difficult period with different factions of parents. For the past year, parents met at nearby homes to figure out how to force improvements at the school. Now they can meet on campus to voice their issues and talk among themselves.

“This was a tough year this last year, and I respect that past and the issues that came up, but I’m so excited about the future,” Garcielita said. “Parents are now coming together and sharing their vision for the school. This is a great new beginning.”

In June, the parents, teachers and the district agreed to move 20th Street into the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which now operates 19 schools in South LA, Boyle Heights and Watts. With Partnership, the school remains under district control but is granted more educational autonomy. It also benefits from the nonprofit organization’s many community connections and resources. Partnership CEO Joan Sullivan attended Tuesday’s dedication and pointed out the importance of parent centers.

“Investing in adults, who are the primary teachers of our children, is a centerpiece of what Partnership believes,” Sullivan said. “Equal access to quality education is the biggest civil rights battle going on, and it’s more important than the suffragette movement or integration or abolition, and the movement will look to parents to lead the way.”

Although the parent center was in the planning stages before Partnership came on the scene, Sullivan said they have helped with equipment and supplies for the center.

“Sometimes parent centers are second thoughts and put off in the corner of the school somewhere,” Sullivan said. “But these are important spaces where parents come together and feel empowered. They learn together and strategize. It is a space where parents can raise their voices and realize they are true partners in the education of their children.”

This is the best way to start turning around the school, said Central District Administrator of Operations Eugene L. Hernandez. “This is the beginning of turning this into a top-notch school,” he said. “Parents need to be engaged.”

Annabella Sales, the community representative hired to work with the 20th Street parent center, said, “Most of the parents who come in are not familiar with technology and they do not have computers or Internet at home. They come here and they learn not only how to help their children with their homework, but the children help them too.”

Cutting the ribbon.

Parents also learn how to navigate getting financial help and looking ahead to college enrollment for their children. “It is a great team effort for everyone involved in education,” said Lorena Padilla-Melendez, director of community relations for the district’s Facilities Services Division. “It shows we are all part of the team.”

Mark Hovatter, chief facilities executive for the district, said, “I am a parent and I love the parent center projects because it costs a small amount of money and we do something that is so critical for the schools.”

Board member Garcia chatted in Spanish with parents and children after the second-graders recited the poem “I, Too, Sing America” and sang “This Little Light of Mine.” Then the school drill team performed.

“This parent center represents power and love and hope and shows something great for the future of these talented children,” Garcia said. “This is your classroom, parents, and if you have doubts and concerns, you can come here to discuss. Everything you need is available here. We will work together for your children.”

As parent Vilchis pointed out, parent involvement could be as simple as helping a teacher cut out shapes or sweep the classrooms.

“There’s a lot of cutting and sweeping to do,” Vilchis said. “There’s enough to do to feel proud and happy and making the world a better place for our children.”

Principal Richard Ramos with Dominga Verduzco.

Haddon Elementary Avenue School is so in demand that families want to drive their children across the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills to attend the Pacoima school.

Haddon is not a charter school, it’s not a new pilot program and it’s not a magnet school (yet). It’s a traditional Title 1 district school in a low-income Latino neighborhood that has been there since 1926.

But it wasn’t always growing. And in fact it had to fight district rules that prohibited families from moving to the school.

Five years ago, parents were so fed up with the school that they initiated a “parent trigger” to try to take over the school from the district. The trigger was never pulled, and a new principal came in who brought programs students wanted, like a Mariachi class, a robotics program and an award-winning speech and debate team.

“We are certainly an anomaly in the district, and I’m learning now that part of my job is to figure out how to be competitive and promote the school,” said Haddon Principal Richard S. Ramos, who has worked with the charter school group Partnerships to Uplift Communities and on dozens of successful electoral campaigns, most recently for Robert Gonzales to the San Fernando City Council in 2012. “We have to figure out better ways to get the word out about what we’re doing that’s good in our schools.”

Soon students were clamoring to transfer to the school — a welcome change especially as without the new enrollment, the school faced a loss of teachers.

Then came the curve ball. District administrators said “No!” to the families who wanted to transfer to Haddon.

The district wouldn’t allow students to transfer because it wasn’t a pilot or magnet or charter school. Families weren’t allowed to leave their home schools to attend Haddon. One family was pleading to get in because their daughter loved robotics, and the parents were willing to drive nearly an hour every day to bring her to the school.

“They have parents wanting to come in, and I don’t understand why it’s not allowed?” school board member Monica Ratliff said at a board meeting this spring after she heard about the issue.

District administrators listened to Ratliff. They worked it out so that applicants could say they wanted to transfer to the school because similar programs were not offered at their home schools. Parents’ requests needed to include a waiver form that explained the programs offered at Haddon were not offered elsewhere.

Removing that roadblock resulted in unprecedented growth for the school unlike any other school in the area. The principal noted that Haddon has had increased enrollment for the past two years. In fact, he said that 39 of the new students he has this year are transferring from charter schools.

“We are in a time now where the entire district is seeing declining enrollment,” Ramos said on the first day of the new school year on Tuesday. For the past decade, the school enrollment was on a steady decline. The school now has an enrollment of more than 900, with a capacity of 960.

Mariachis at Haddon. (Courtesy: Haddon)

Ratliff, who was at Haddon on Tuesday for the first day of school, said she was a bit irritated about the district’s initial response late in the school year.

“It should not be up to a board member to have to bring this up at a meeting to promote that a school is doing well,” Ratliff said. “Everyone on the administrative level should be helpful in a situation like this,” Ratliff added. “I’m glad the district was listening and no one stymied the efforts of this great principal.”

Ratliff pointed out that many principals at traditional district schools have great programs that no one hears about, and the district should be better at promoting those programs. She said charter schools do their own promotion and have learned to become competitive for students, so the district schools should too.

Monica Ratliff greets volunteers on the first day of school.

“Our principals haven’t had time to promote their programs,” Ratliff said.

One solution for Haddon is that the school will apply to become a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) Magnet Academy. That proposal will come before the school board in January. Ratliff said she would be stunned if it doesn’t get approved. When it becomes a magnet school, the school will have open enrollment and anyone can apply from within the district.

Superintendent Michelle King repeatedly brings up sharing best practices and touting and promoting district school successes. The LA Unified Communications Department launched LAUSD Daily last year and LAUSD Shines, which shares school successes. They place posters in schools and throughout the district to encourage principals, teachers, parents and students to share their stories.

“I am realizing I have to be competitive with our school,” Ramos said. “People don’t hear about our great programs unless they hear about it in the laundromat or at a soccer game.”

Before Ramos came to the school, parents at Haddon organized a parent union chapter to initiate a parent trigger and began gathering signatures in 2011, aided by Parent Revolution, which helps with parent trigger movements at failing schools.

But in January 2013, parents voted to put the process “on pause.” The following month, teachers at the school voted to institute a series of reforms by becoming a Local Initiative School, a reform model that allows some autonomy from district policies, such as in hiring.

“We were unhappy, and the district brought in a new principal and the parents are now happy,” said Dominga Verduzco, who was president of the parent chapter. “They implemented new programs and a curriculum and brought in a principal who puts kids first. We like what he is doing,” Verduzco said Tuesday as she helped give out school supplies donated by the nonprofit Rainbow Packs.

Haddon’s speech and debate team. (Courtesy: Haddon)

This is the last year at the school for Verduzco’s fifth-grader, and she is proud of the changes she helped create.

The teachers voted 29 to 2 in favor of the STEAM program to come to the school, and Ramos said they all stepped up to improve the school curriculum. Test scores are still not up to par, with the latest scores showing English and math at 18 and 11 percent meeting or exceeding standards, respectively, and 5 percent chronically absent. They expect to see improvements soon.

“Some of the special programs we have are electives that kids don’t see until middle school,” Ramos said.

Not only are the Mariachi classes a big draw, but the students can choose gardening, cooking, computers and photography thanks to the nonprofit Woodcraft Rangers, which offers after-school activities and clubs that align with Common Core standards. Do It Yourself Girls also comes to campus and helps introduce girls to professions such as engineering, construction and other traditionally male professions.

Another plan Ramos has for the school is to make it a dual language school.

“Although most of the students are bilingual, it is not a good Spanish, it is more colloquial and they could benefit from a dual language program,” Ramos said.

He wants to get the school’s test scores up, but the principal said he already notes some major changes. The attendance rate is increasing, chronic absences are down, and even teacher attendance increased from 69 percent to 79 percent.

This year, the school has a new director for the parent center, and the school was picked to be part of the Early Language Literacy Plan that works to make sure students read by third grade. The school is also starting a new Eureka math program — and explaining all the changes to parents along the way.

“People are wanting to come to school, and that’s a good thing,” Ramos said.

Meanwhile, Ratliff, who is running for Los Angeles City Council and will be leaving the school board, said she hopes the district will take note of the successes at Haddon.

“People do a lot of head nodding at the district level, but all administrators should be on the same page with helping schools like this succeed,” Ratliff said.

Former Superintendent Ramon Cortines with 20th Street families last summer. (Photo by Omar Calvillo)

After two legal attempts by parents to take over a South-Central LA elementary school they said was failing their children, an agreement has been reached for the school to join the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. The deal averts a threatened lawsuit and ends a two-year “parent trigger” battle.

The agreement moves 20th Street Elementary into the Partnership family of 17 schools in South LA, Boyle Heights and Watts. The organization takes over low-performing schools while working in conjunction with the district to manage the schools and retaining union contracts.

The plan was announced Tuesday by parents at the school, the Partnership and LA Unified in a district press release, which said LA Unified and the Partnership signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding for the organization to manage the school, starting with the upcoming school year.

The parent group, known as the 20th Street Parents Union, has been supported by Parent Revolution, a nonprofit group that helps parents take over failing schools through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act — known as the “parent trigger” — which allows parents to enact changes at a school if a majority of them sign a petition. The changes can include replacing administrators or converting the school into an independent charter school. In this case, 20th Street will remain a traditional LA Unified school but with some changes.

“I really think we have reached a place where the families that have led this campaign over the last two years are ready to work with all the other families, ready to work with the school and ready to work with the Partnership and have everyone on the same team moving forward,” said Seth Litt, CEO of Parent Revolution. “It’s an important part of the progress of this school, not just signing the MOU but that the whole community comes together to support the school, and I think this is a moment where everyone is focused on that.”

Parents at 20th Street, a K-5th grade campus serving nearly 600 students, first enacted a parent trigger during the 2014-15 school year but withdrew it when LA Unified changed principals at the school and made a number of assurances. But parent leaders were unhappy with the progress, and in January they enacted another parent trigger petition.

Omar Calvillo, a 20th Street Parents Union coordinator, said he is pleased that the Partnership will now manage the school.

“We are very excited to work with the Partnership organization, our school staff, and all parents at the school to work for the education our children deserve,” said Calvillo in a statement. “We want to thank both LAUSD and the Partnership for coming to a collaborative agreement that addresses our concerns and offers a strong path forward for our community. Now it is time for all of us – parents, teachers, and the Partnership team – to come together and work as one team on behalf on our children.”

Academic performance has been at the heart of the parents’ grievances. The most recent 20th Street school report card showed 37 percent of 5th-graders passing the California Standards Test compared to a district average of 47 percent. The school also scored a 46 out of 100 on the new CORE accountability system, while the the district average was 60.

In March, the district rejected the second parent trigger and said the school didn’t qualify for one, and that no district school qualified under the state parent trigger law because the state has no current accountability system since the Academic Performance Index was canceled in 2013. The state is currently working on a new system.

In 2014, former Superintendent John Deasy declared that the district was exempt from the parent trigger due to a federal waiver it had received from the federal No Child Left Behind law. Deasy resigned in October 2014, and the following month his replacement, Ramon Cortines, reversed the decision. Michelle King took over as superintendent in January after Cortines retired, and in March essentially reversed district policy on parent triggers.

“L.A. Unified, The Partnership, parents and Parent Revolution share the vision of providing high-quality learning opportunities for the students of 20th Street Elementary,” said King in a statement. “With this collaborative new partnership, we can continue to strengthen the academic supports, social-emotional learning opportunities and parent-engagement programs that are essential to this school community.”

At a meeting in May with district leaders, parents at the school outlined their grievances, which included a lack of progress in making academic changes in the classroom. A press release from the 20th Street Parents Union outlined a number of changes the Partnership said it is going to bring to the school, including additional funding to hire an assistant principal and a Title III coordinator to support English learners, a plan to implement the Eureka math curriculum and for 20th Street to become part of the district’s per pupil funding pilot program.

“We are excited to welcome 20th Street Elementary to our family of schools and look forward to building on the unique strengths of the school staff and community,” said Partnership CEO Joan Sullivan in a statement. “Our goal is to partner together to empower all students with a high-quality education.”

LA Unified school board member Monica Garcia, who has worked closely with the 20th Street Parents Union, endorsed the plan.

“This school community wants excellent services and outcomes for all youth and the Partnership is aligned with this mission,” García said in a statement. “Together, courageous parents, committed teachers and bold administrators will model for other schools, communities and districts on how to create learning environments for children and adults, with a focus on student learning, educator development and parent engagement.”

Parent Omar Calvillo at Monday’s meeting at 20th Street Elementary School.

Parents may be on the verge of settling a two-year “parent trigger” battle at 20th Street Elementary School without a lawsuit, which both sides hoped to avoid.

Nearly 200 parents, students and teachers attended a Monday evening meeting at the school and heard about a unique alternative in which 20th Street would win greater autonomy but be neither an independent charter nor remain solely a traditional district school. The meeting became heated at times, with an equal amount of debate in English and Spanish.

Joan Sullivan, CEO of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which was brought into the situation at parent organizers’ request, told the gathering Monday that the Partnership was willing to work with the school and the district to solve the issues that parents have with the teaching and student scores at the K-5th grade campus that serves nearly 600 students in South-Central LA.

“There are a lot of impassioned parents here who are concerned about their children’s education with very different ideas of how to get there,” Sullivan said. “Change is hard, there needs to be healing. You need to look forward and making this a school that every child wants to come to every day.”

Coordinator Ana Garcia, right, with other 20th Street teachers and staff.

The parents who initiated the parent trigger said they heard for the first time Monday some promising compromises by the school district. Local District Central Superintendent Roberto Martinez attended and dispelled some of the concerns that the parents had about a deal with Partnership.

“The superintendent (Michelle King) will be making the final decision, but we are looking at a standard contract with Partnership,” Martinez said. “We would accept Partnership running the school.”

In March, the district rejected the parent trigger saying the school didn’t qualify because it wasn’t failing, but by that rationale no school in the state would qualify because the state API test scores had been suspended. The district did acknowledge that the parents had gathered enough signatures to trigger a take-over.

The most recent 20th Street school report card showed only slight improvements, with 37 percent of 5th-graders passing the California Standards Test compared to a district average of 47 percent. On the new CORE accountability system, the school scored a 46 out of 100. The district average was 60.

Omar Calvillo — one of the parents who filed the parent trigger which allows parents to take over a failing school and possibly create a charter school — said he was relieved that the district would allow a standard Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) rather than a more restrictive one that was previously presented to them when they met with King last month.

“We need to get this in writing, there is still a lot of lack of trust, so we want to see it from Miss King herself,” Calvillo said. “We like the Partnership model. It could work out.”

Local District Central Superintendent Roberto Martinez.

But Sullivan said all the legal wrangling has to end before Partnership will get involved with the school. “Partnership will not enter into an agreement if litigation is still active, and unless all parties agree,” Sullivan said.

The parents are supported by Parent Revolution, a nonprofit group that helps parents organize and take over a failing campus through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act, and is funded by groups that support independent charter schools. The parents are represented at no charge by the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, and Mark Holscher, a partner at the firm, said litigation is usually costly on all sides. He said the Anaheim School District put aside $1 million in a parent trigger battle over a school in that district which the school ultimately lost, and it’s similar to the 20th Street case.

About 200 parents attended the meeting Monday.

“Everyone wants to settle this and avoid a lawsuit and get on with educating our children,” Calvillo said. “But this has come only a few weeks before the end of the school year, and once again, it is too late.”

Most of the three dozen teachers and staff, all wearing yellow school spirit shirts, came to the meeting and protested the Partnership plan.

“What you are proposing is what we are doing now,” said kindergarten teacher Vanessa Romo. “People are comfortable with the way we are doing things now, we don’t need another disruption.”

One of the young girls in the audience shouted, “We love our principal!”

Principal Mario Garcielita, who is just finishing his first year at the school, was brought in during the parent trigger to initiate changes. By November, the parents said they had no confidence in the changes being made and re-filed the trigger option in January. In the meantime, Garcielita announced a grant from a group called People for Parks to keep the school’s playground open on Saturdays, and that the school’s library would be getting a facelift and new books. For most of Monday’s meeting, the principal just rushed around the room holding a microphone allowing the parents and teachers to speak.

After the meeting, school coordinator Ana Garcia told LA School Report, “It is never enough with some of these parents, we will never satisfy them.” She said that eight weeks at the beginning of the school year wasn’t enough time to turn the school around, and the parents were being unrealistic. “We don’t need more changes to the school.”

Lupe Aragon, one of the parents who initiated the trigger, said she has seen some improvements at the school and in some of the homework her daughter is bringing home. The school has also improved by painting murals on the walls, planting trees and gardens and fixing up the library, “but many of these things are cosmetic, and it’s more important to have better education,” Aragon said.

Some improvements have been made at the school.

The Partnership runs 17 schools in South Central LA, Boyle Heights and Watts and typically take the lowest-performing schools in an area. Sullivan said the Partnership will provide support and professional development for the teachers, employ the principal for the entire year including over the summer and connect the school with other resources to help with technology and teaching programs that are different from those offered through the district.

“We also provide extensive workshops for parents that will help you understand how to figure out your child’s reading level” and provide other information including how to apply for scholarships to college, Sullivan said. At Partnership schools, teachers continue to have the same UTLA contract and district seniority, but the curriculum allows for more flexibility.

The Partnership piloted the idea of the school report card that every school now has, which assesses what students, parents and teachers feel about the school.

Two years ago only 17 percent of the parents and 2 percent of the staff at 20th Street even filled out the survey to rate the school, and last year 65 percent of the parents and 45 percent of the staff participated. Although the recent survey shows significant improvements, scores still rank below the district average. Martinez noted that the school’s reclassification rate for English learners nearly doubled this year, from 23 students to 44, which is a “vast improvement,” he said.

Martinez also pointed out that the district already is improving the Parent Center at the school with a $69,000 grant.

Sullivan concluded Monday’s meeting by saying that she thought the Partnership model would fit nicely at the school, but decisions still have to be made by everyone involved. She said, “Every campus has good things to build on, and I know we can help, even if I’m a little bit scared of all the divisions.”

20th Street Elementary School

The LA Unified school board broke into a surprise closed session for several hours Tuesday afternoon in the middle of their public meeting in order to head off a potential “parent trigger” lawsuit over 20th Street Elementary School.

All morning, the school board was in closed session to discuss employee actions, contract renewals and pending litigation. Then, in the middle of the 1 p.m. public meeting, school board secretariat Jefferson Crain said they were going into closed session again to discuss the potential litigation involving the elementary school.

Board member Monica Garcia, who has worked with the 20th Street parents to try to solve the issues, said Wednesday that the closed-door session wasn’t merely to stop the threatened lawsuit.

“We are making every effort to listen to all of the concerns, the dreams and aspirations of all the players and give energy into making that a better school,” Garcia told LA School Report.

Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution — a nonprofit group that helps parents organize and take over a failing campus through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act — said the attorney representing the parents “made it very clear that there’s pending litigation and that’s why in the closed sessions they went in to see what the settlement would look like. The parents expressed clearly there’s no plausible deal without a significant shift in who’s managing the school.”

But the district didn’t offer enough, Rose said. “The parents need autonomy and without the necessary changes, they will go the legal route and be successful. The district never did any of the things they promised, so of course there’s a lot of hesitation on the part of the parents.”

One of the parents, Omar Calvillo, who helped file the trigger against the district, said the parents are trying to work on a deal with Partnership for Los Angeles Schools that could offer a hybrid of a charter and traditional school as an option, which they have done in 17 schools in the South Central LA area.

“We like the Partnership, but the deal the district offered still had them completely in charge of our school,” Calvillo said. “The attorneys are negotiating, and that’s probably what is going on in the closed session.”

No one seems to want to go to court. “We don’t want a lawsuit, it’s not good for the district or school or community,” Calvillo said. “We care for LAUSD, there are some great teachers. We want to work with the district.”

After a March meeting with Superintendent Michelle King and other district officials at the school, Calvillo said some things have improved. “They fixed the fence and the yard and have some professional development for the teachers, but we haven’t seen much in the classroom. We need something more concrete.”

Even the most recent school report card showed only slight improvements, and the 5th-graders passing the California Standards Test was at 37 percent while the district average is 47 percent. On the new CORE accountability system, the school scored a 46 out of 100. The district average was 60.

“We are very nervous about what the district promises because we have been promised things before and they never happened,” Calvillo said. “We just want the best quality education for our kids.”

In a recent letter to the parents, David Holmquist, the district’s general counsel, acknowledged that the parents collected more than 50 percent of the family signatures required for a parent trigger takeover.

“Based on our review, the district will not contest a claim that 50 percent signature threshold was met,” the letter stated.

Garcia said that no decision has been made at the district level, but she thinks that the Partnership program could work for the school. She said there are exciting schools in the area.

“There’s a very successful parent energy at this school site, and we want to meet the needs of parents without them having to go elsewhere,” Garcia said. “I understand that people are not satisfied with the pace of change, I understand that, and it is the responsibility of the district to to change that.”

20th Street parents discussing petition. By Omar Calvillo.

About 100 parents from 20th Street Elementary School met Tuesday night in the auditorium with more than a dozen school administrators after the district denied a “parent trigger” that would allow them to make sweeping changes to the school. Some of the parents were still unhappy, however.

“It was like a big cheerleading session,” said parent Omar Calvillo, who is on the school site council and the English Learner Advisory Committee and one of the parents who started the petition drive under the state’s Parent Empowerment Act. The act, also known as parent trigger, is geared toward underperforming schools so that parents can force changes in instruction and personnel or even create a charter school.

The Parents Union tried for nearly three years to make changes at the school and threatened to file a parent trigger petition last year but withdrew it when the district promised to make changes. They filed in February after they said no changes were made this school year, and they were equally underwhelmed at Tuesday’s meeting.

“They offered no plans to improve education whatsoever,” Calvillo said. “It was very disappointing.”

But Local District Central Superintendent Roberto Martinez told LA School Report that he thought the meeting went very well and that they answered many of the parents’ concerns. He mentioned some of the immediate responses the district has made regarding the initial petition, including changing the principal seven months ago, creating a new reading pilot reading program and getting a grant to keep the school open on Saturdays and allow more parents to be trained and involved.

“We want the parents to be involved and empower them to ask the right questions,” Martinez said. “Our expectation for the teachers is that they communicate where the children are at every step of their education. There are immediate changes going on, and it’s happening right now.”

More than 58 percent, or the 342 families (and more are still signing on), signed a petition for the parent trigger, but last weekend, in the final hours before the district’s Saturday deadline to respond, the district said the school was ineligible for four reasons, which some say are counter-intuitive to the law. Parent Revolution, a nonprofit group that helps parents organize and take over a failing campus, said that some of the district’s arguments were similar to arguments made by Anaheim’s school district in rebuffing a similar parent trigger, but those were rejected by a judge last summer. The case is on appeal.

Seth Litt, Parent Revolution’s CEO who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said, “It was highly disorganized and was filled with empty phrases.” Litt, who was previously principal of a failing school, said the district should have offered a specific instructional plan and explained why it has taken so long for it to take action. “If I made a presentation like that, I would have been fired before I got out the door,” he said.

But one of the parents at the meeting who was against the parent trigger petition asked for those in favor of the new direction of the school to stand up, and all but about a half dozen did, Martinez said. Meanwhile, principals from feeder schools Nava College Prep and Jefferson High School attended the meeting to explain the path toward the high-achieving schools that their children will attend.

School board member Monica Garcia, who represents the district, told LA School Report that she met many times with the parents of 20th Street and felt their frustration.

“I am expecting that the energy to transform and improve is being received by the district, and I think the parent leaders have been successful in creating urgency and identifying needs and in challenging the campus and district to provide high-quality opportunities for every child in that school. I know that the superintendent, local district superintendent, principal and other people are paying attention. While there may not be agreement about the how, the what is very real and concrete.”

Garcia said there are many factions among the parents, and some want to turn the school into a charter school. Garcia said the area has a proliferation of charter schools, and the neighborhood is becoming more safe.

“Parents are seeing what is going on at other schools and want their children to have that same opportunity,” Garcia said. “What we need to do is have the same opportunities for all students. This is an effort to improve a school from the district’s perspective, and I have heard leadership embrace that end. I’ve heard people at multiple levels in how to support that campus and engage all the campus and accelerate the pace of academic growth.”

The district needs to act faster, Garcia acknowledged. “I think one of the things we learned from all this is that the acceleration was not fast enough. For the parent who has a kid in fifth grade, time is precious. Parent trigger is one of those ways that parents can engage.”

Calvillo said that he and many of the families signing the petition live very close to the school. He lives a block away and has lived in the neighborhood for 39 years. He went to the school in the 1980s and said there were many more activities and after-school programs then.

“I want my local neighborhood school to be the same for my two boys and not have to take them even a mile away to another school,” Calvillo said. “We have waited too long for changes, and there haven’t been any.”

Calvillo did say he liked both of the teachers his sons now have but said the course instruction has been sporadic among the teachers. He also said for years he had been pushing for typing instruction especially since the students now take state tests on computers. He said his son in second grade recently told him they were now finally learning to type. He also said the district also assigned the school an assistant principal who is very proactive.

But Calvillo said he was angry that the school police were also at the meeting, and their presence intimidated some of the parents.

The Parents Union that filed the trigger petition said they have asked for proposals for help and looked at Magnolia Charter, which some of the parents said they visited and were impressed with. The parents also met with Superintendent Michelle King and Garcia to consider Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which at the request of Parent Revolution applied to help the school reorganize. The Partnership receives some waivers from the district, but their 17 schools are not charters.

The parents have not decided their next step, but that could include legal action. The Anaheim school district put aside $1 million to fight their parent trigger case.

“You would think that the district wouldn’t want to waste taxpayer money fighting this,” said attorney Mark Holscher, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, which has represented school districts in two other parent trigger cases pro bono. “This is an act passed by the state, and they are trying to find a way around it. This is the first time in California a district has essentially refused to even follow the parent trigger law.”

Charlene Cheng, of the California Department of Education communications department, said the parent trigger issue is “handled at the local level, so we won’t be able to comment.”

Meanwhile, Martinez said he and his staff are trying to bring all the parents and their concerns together and address each one of them. “There are a lot of changes happening, we want the parents to be a part of it and empower them.”

The Parents Union plans to decide within the next week whether it will pursue legal options.

“People don’t understand how beat up we feel,” Calvillo said. “We have a total lack of trust and faith with this school district.”

Former superintendent Ramon Cortines with 20th Street families over the summer. (Photo by Omar Calvillo.)

LA Unified has rejected a parent petition to take over a failing elementary school in South Central Los Angeles, reversing district policy and essentially asserting that no California school qualifies under the state “parent trigger” law.

Parents of 20th Street Elementary School were informed of the district’s rejection in a letter late Saturday, the last day the district had to notify the parents. They had hoped to be able to take over the school and possibly create a charter through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act, or parent trigger, which has been used twice to help under-performing LA Unified schools.

“We are so disappointed, all the parents are really upset,” said Guadalupe Aragon, one of the parents who started the petition drive. “We just want our children to have the same opportunities to get to college that other children in the district have, and this was our only way to do it. We are very angry.”

After two years of trying to get changes at the school, and dropping the threatened trigger by the parents at least once, the 20th Street Parents Union filed again last month to take over the school with 57 percent of the families (the parents of 342 students) signing a petition.

“This is shameful,” said former California state senator Gloria Romero, who authored the law, after reading the district’s letter. “They have a brand new superintendent and she is harking to the past, in a sense. Where is the leadership? It’s supposed to be a new game with LA being unified. This does not bode well for the spirit of the law.”

The law was passed in 2010 and used at two LA Unified schools in 2013. That year, statewide tests were suspended in anticipation of computerized tests based on the Common Core State Standards. The following year former Superintendent John Deasy argued that the district was exempt, for one year, from the parent trigger by a federal waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law that allowed LA Unified and seven other California school districts to create their own metrics for academic performance in the temporary absence of statewide standards.

One of the first things interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines did when he took over was to reverse Deasy’s edict and lift the ban on parent triggers. King worked under both Deasy and Cortines.

King and her staff met with parents only five days before the letter was sent out rejecting their petition. The meeting last Monday, held at district headquarters, was called by King and also attended by representatives of Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which was brought in by the district to see if it might be a solution for the parents.

Joan Sullivan, CEO for Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, said she was invited to attend the meeting at the district to offer some sort of solution for 20th Street. Partnership was offering a hybrid of a charter and traditional school as an option, which they have done in 17 schools over the past eight years in the South Central LA area.

“Parents are asking for a choice, and we could offer a good option,” said Sullivan said. “We take on whole schools and support them with the current student body and most of the staff and use the parent involvement and voice.”

At last week’s meeting, the district “never told us that our school may not be eligible or that there was any problem with our petition,” Aragon said.

In a statement Monday to LA School Report, King said, “Some parents were dissatisfied with our efforts and filed petitions under the Parent Empowerment Act to change the governance structure of 20th Street Elementary School. Because the law doesn’t apply to this situation, we returned the petitions. However, we remain committed to working with parents to address all concerns in a timely manner.”

The letter to the parents, written by LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist, gave four reasons why the parents’ petition was denied, including some of the same reasoning that Deasy used.

20th Street Parents Union meeting.

First, the letter said the school doesn’t have an Academic Performance Index under 800 as the law requires. That’s not true, according to Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution, a group that helps parents organize and take over a failing campus. He said the API score of the school is based on the past three years of scores, and 20th Street has a score of 765. There is no API score for this school year because the state suspension of testing.

Second, the letter notes that a school must fail to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), but the district letter states that 20th Street has in fact improved, based on state data released in December. However, the AYP no longer measures test scores, because of the suspension in testing, but simply measures the attendance of students during the test. LA Unified released data showing that 20th Street has 96.29 percent attendance compared to 95 percent for the district.

The Anaheim School District used a similar argument regarding AYP to to fight a parent trigger at Palm Lane Elementary School, but it was rejected by a judge last summer. The district has appealed the ruling.

Third, the district said that a federal waiver granted to the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, exempted the district and “relieved LAUSD from the requirements of taking improvement actions,” according to the letter by Holmquist. But the U.S. Department of Education, which granted the waiver and was asked to clarify its conditions, stated at the time that neither the federal government nor any other entity can override a state law.

In its fourth reason for rejecting the 20th Street petition, LA Unified said the parents didn’t state whether they wanted to have a solution within the district or create an independent charter school. But according to the state trigger law, parents’ petitions are not required to state their preferences. Aragon and other parents said they always had the intention of entertaining charter management organizations to help their school.

One of those is Magnolia Public Schools, led by CEO Caprice Young, a former LA Unified school board member. She said, “We absolutely want to support the families of 20th Street Elementary School, and we know we have a phenomenal program that can help them. We like working with proactive families, and this shows that LAUSD does not want parents to be involved, otherwise they would support this.”

Young said she remembered when Cortines reversed Deasy’s initial stance against the triggers, and said, “LAUSD has a moral obligation to uphold this.”

Romero said the district shouldn’t waste taxpayer money fighting parents on this issue, especially since she created the law to avoid just that. The law firm of Kirkland & Ellis has offered to handle the legal issues for parent triggers at no cost throughout the state.

Mark Holscher, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, said his firm is helping the parents in communities that couldn’t afford legal representation on their own. He said he cannot discuss any plans yet that the 20th Street parents may have about pursing a case against LA Unified but did say the situation is very similar to the one they represented in Anaheim.

“The LA Unified School District sent our clients an email on Saturday and said they were inspired by the courageous conversations of the parent leaders, but those are empty words,” Holscher said. “What they’ve done is refuse to even consider the parent trigger law. Parents tried to work with the district on the last petition. LAUSD didn’t honor what they said they would do. They can’t ignore the Parent Empowerment Act.”

In response, King said, “LA Unified is committed to partnering with all parents of 20th Street Elementary School to provide our students with high quality learning opportunities and to help them succeed. We are continuing to strengthen instructional supports and enhance social-emotional and parent-engagement programs that are essential to the school community. We look forward to working with the school community to build a unified vision that addresses the needs of all students.”

Romero said the district must do more. “Ultimately, the parents and schools will prevail,” Romero said. “LAUSD needs to read the law. It would be in the best interest of reform for LA Unified to accept the parent petition and not fight the parents. The sacrifice is that they are losing more time for kids. It’s shameful.”

This article has been corrected to note the year that John Deasy requested the one-year exemption, which was in 2013, and that the Anaheim School District had used the AYP argument in its rejection of the Palm Lane trigger, not the CORE waiver argument. 

For the first time, a Parent Trigger has been threatened twice for the same school. The parents of the 20th Street Elementary School in South Central Los Angeles are fed up with the lack of response from LA Unified after their first attempt two years ago to take over the school and on Monday filed a new petition with the district.

It all started when Guadalupe Aragon saw the report card that rated her daughter’s elementary school and showed that only 43 percent of the students at the school were performing at grade level. She decided to do something about it.

Parents signed a petition to take over the school through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act, often called a “Parent Trigger,” which allows parent groups to push for sweeping changes and even create a charter school. The LA Unified district administrators changed principals at the school, held meetings, made assurances. But that was two years ago.

This week, the Parents Union gathered yet another petition of 58 percent of the parents in the school of 591 students and called for another Parent Trigger. This time they’re not waiting for promises to be fulfilled.

The Parent Union of 20th Street Elementary. (Photo courtesy of Guadalupe Aragon)

“We had so many meetings and they told us they were going to do things, but nothing ever happened, we won’t wait anymore,” said Aragon, who was one of two parents signing the Feb. 1 letter to Superintendent Michelle King stating their case for the Parent Trigger and presenting the petition. The petition states that the parents are demanding a “restart,” an option that would allow them to create or bring in a charter school to operate 20th Street.

“The parents shelved their petition the first time around and agreed to work with top district officials, but there was no change at the school, it’s as if the petition never happened,” said Gabe Rose, the chief strategy officer of Parent Revolution, a group that helped write the Parent Empowerment Act in 2011. “Now we’re forced to file again.”

The act allows communities to jumpstart changes at chronically low-performing schools. It requires a majority of the parents to sign a petition that could force a district to bring in new leadership and staff, or convert a school into a nonprofit independent charter.

At LAUSD, nine schools have been threatened with Parent Triggers, and the district made changes to six of them before petitions were filed, according to Rose. Three schools at LAUSD — Weigand Avenue Elementary in Watts, 24th Street Elementary in South Central and 20th Street — resulted in filing petitions with the district to date.

In the state, there were three other schools where Parent Triggers were filed, in Anaheim, Compton and Adelanto school districts. Although it started in California, similar Parent Trigger laws have since been passed in Connecticut, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana and Ohio. They are being considered in other states.

Guadalupe Aragon, a frustrated parent. (Al Jazeera)

“These parents have been patient, they have followed the law and expected strong leadership to help turn their school around, but it didn’t happen,” Rose said.

The parents say that the school’s Academic Performance Index score failed to meet the expected 800 in more than 15 years. Last year, 20th Street Elementary test scores had only 19 percent of the students at grade level in English, and only 20 percent were at grade level in math. The school was ranked among the bottom 20 percent of elementary schools in the state, and the bottom 30 percent for schools with similar demographics.

The school is 94 percent Latino, 4 percent African-American and has 92 percent low- income families. Nearly half, 49 percent, are English learners. Charter schools and pilot schools exist in the area, but parents say they want their children to go to the school closest to them.

“I want my daughter Amy to go to a school that is easier and more accessible to our home,” Aragon said. “She had a chance to go to a charter school, but I wanted her to go to the local school, maybe I made a mistake. We are a poor community, many immigrants, right near downtown LA, and many of us don’t have a choice.”

Aragon and the other parents were concerned that their children were getting assignments that were too simple. In fourth grade math, Amy was bringing home addition problems for homework, when the district standards call for multiplication and some geometry.

Gabe Rose from Parent Revolution. (Al Jazeera)

“I was surprised that they didn’t offer tutoring,” Aragon said. “Parents got so frustrated that they weren’t taken seriously so they stopped attending the meetings.”

The parents met with their board member, Mónica Garcia, and she tried to work things out, but the parents weren’t satisfied. Garcia’s office wasn’t available to comment on the Parent Trigger petition.

David Holmquist, LAUSD general counsel, stated that the district’s legal team is reviewing the documents and has “no further comment at this time.”

Among the promises that the parents say were broken:

• School leadership: Parents were promised that a strong and experienced school leader would take over the school. Instead, the district installed a first-year principal with no prior experience leading a school turnaround effort. Parents were never allowed to interview principal candidates or be part of the process.

• Professional development: Parents were promised that teachers would get professional development before the start of the 2015-2016 school year, which never happened. Parents were also promised ongoing professional development for teachers to help them improve.

• School climate: Parents were promised a new and renewed school climate. Many parents still report feeling disrespected and unwelcome at the school. 

• Sense of urgency: Parents were promised that the district would implement its plan with a sense of urgency and with the full buy-in of school staff. Instead, the district refused to even acknowledge that the plan was finalized until three months into the school year.

Families discuss 20th Street petition drive. (Photo courtesy of Gabe Rose)

By law, LAUSD has 40 days, until March 12, to say whether the petitions are valid and then lay out a plan to do what the parents requested, Rose said. If not, the parents are ready to go to court.

“It’s not the desired outcome to go to court, but there is a law firm willing to take the case pro bono,” Rose said. “However, LAUSD has been more cooperative than other districts that tried fighting the Parent Trigger and had to be sued. LAUSD has been good about trying to avoid the lawsuits, and we just want them to start helping the school.”

Seth Litt

Parent Revolution has announced that Seth Litt is taking over as its CEO. The news comes a full nine months after the organization’s former executive director and founder, Ben Austin, stepped down.

Parent Revolution was formed in 2009 by Austin and played a role in creating California’s “parent trigger” law. It also offers guidance and help to parent groups wanting to implement the law at their school.

Litt brings a long career in education to Parent Revolution: he was a teacher in middle school in the south Bronx, a Teach for America corps member, a union chapter leader and charter high school principal.

“I am excited to join Parent Revolution and lead the organization through its next chapter of impact for students and families,” Litt said in a statement. “Families in every community deserve more than hope or a roll of the dice – they deserve information, access to the system, and real power to make changes for their kids and their communities. For too long parents in communities like the south Bronx, south Los Angeles, and elsewhere have been on their own. They deserve the power to take action and effect change in their children’s education and lives.”

Alison Laslett, Parent Revolution’s Chief Operating Officer, has been serving as interim executive director while the board searched for a permanent replacement, a role now changed to the title of CEO.

Parent Revolution and the parent trigger law have proven to be a controversial and polarizing presence in California. Under the parent trigger law, which was passed in 2010, parents at a chronically underperforming school that meets certain criteria can call for reform if a majority of them sign a petition requesting a specific change. The changes could include converting the school into a charter school or changing the administration.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board, which originally supported the parent trigger law, recently called for an end to it, in part because it was rarely used.

“There have been only four schools in which parents filed petitions that succeeded in forcing a change. Parents at five more schools used the petition process as leverage to negotiate changes, a much less disruptive process, without ever filing an actual petition,” the Times wrote.

Undeterred, Parent Revolution has pointed to a recent California Superior Court judge’s ruling that a parent trigger campaign could move forward at an Orange County school as a victory.

“The Palm Lane decision is very empowering and uplifting for all parents in California,” said Mehul Patel, communications manager for Parent Revolution, according to The Heartland Institute. “The judge’s decision to side with parents shows that justice can be on the right side.”

Writing in the Huffington Post, Austin said that LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines‘ decision not to fight the implementation of the parent trigger law in the district was a major reason he decided to step down in December.

“We have normalized the idea of parent power and institutionalized parent trigger into our legal and political framework,” Austin wrote. “That’s a paradigm shift from when we launched six years ago. It also changes the nature of our work. It’s now about long term movement and institution building. That requires a different kind of leadership.”

“We heard exciting news that the district is going to transfer both the principal and assistant principal,” said Alfonso Flores, an educational consultant and founder of Excellent Educational Solutions. “This is the best possible outcome and it shows what can happen when the teachers and community come together.”

The parents and teachers were among the first to unite to use a Parent Trigger campaign under the Parent Empowerment Act. If more than 50 percent of parents at a low-performing school sign a petition, the parents can then enact change, including removing its leadership or converting it to a charter.

Flores works with former California State Sen. Gloria Romero at the nonprofit California Center for Parent Empowerment. He said the threat of the Parent Trigger campaign caused LA Unified to act despite years of complaints. Romero helped the parents and teachers with their petition campaign.

Flores told LA School Report that Superintendent Ramon Cortines “was gracious when meeting with parents and teachers. He listened to all the complaints. Then, he came back and made the greatest announcement that we could imagine.”

Parents and teachers will both be involved in a committee to pick the new principal, according to the district. And, Cortines promised that more resources will be coming to the school.

The deadline to apply as principal is tomorrow. The school includes about 630 students, with a 99 percent Latino population, 57 percent English Learners, 9 percent with disabilities, 4 percent gifted and 84 percent economically disadvantaged. The position pays between $87,678 and $109,487.

The Fishburn administrators had apparently refused to use some financial resources allocated to the school and in some cases returned thousands of dollars that could have been spent on Fishburn students and teachers.

“We were happy to hear that Mr. Cortines said he would relocate that money and return it to the school because it was done in retaliation to the parents,” Flores said.

In past years, petitions to remove the principal were ignored by both LAUSD officials and school board members. Parents said the retaliation by school administrators included the shutting off of school water fountains, closing student restrooms or refusing to stock toilet paper, and keeping parents with special needs students waiting up to three years to give them an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

“We are no longer ignored or invisible because of this great law,” said parent leader Mirna Borquez.

The official school website still has the transferred principal, Beatriz Bogan, listed. The interviews for the new principal are expected to start in mid July.

Members of Parent Revolution

Parents of students at 20th Street Elementary in Central LA have unanimously approved a district proposal to turn around the low-performing school, starting next year. As a result, the local parent union is dropping plans for a school-wide take over under the state Parent Trigger law.

The deal with LA Unified ensures that all of the current staff will remain in place at the school, and it is the first agreement of its kind to set concrete performance targets. Teachers are expected to increase the number of students scoring at or above grade level in reading, math and state language tests for English learners, by 25 percent over the next year. For 2013, the most recent year available, these were the percentages of students proficient in reading and math:

• Second grade: 38 and 33
• Third grade: 36 and 59
• Fourth grade: 54 and 56
• Fifth grade: 43 and 52

District officials also agreed to transform the struggling school by aligning curriculum and instructional techniques with that of Julian Nava Learning Complex, which houses two high-performing pilot schools — a middle school and a high school — in the area. Finally, 20th Street will become a second feeder elementary school into the competitive Nava schools. The other is Nevin Elementary School.

“Our goal all along was to connect the 20th Street to Julian Nava,” Lupe Aragon, whose fourth grade daughter attends 20th Street, told LA School Report.

Aragon is a key figure among the parent union calling for swift changes on campus. While she had always been content with the quality of teaching and learning her daughter received at the school, “everything changed  in the fourth grade,” she said.

“All of a sudden she was brining home first grade level math homework,” she said. “It’s been a real disappointment. Our kids are getting out of elementary school and going into junior high, and they don’t even know the basics.”

According to Aragon, the overhaul of academic standards at 20th Street will be implemented under the guidance Tommy Welch, who is currently a principal at Julian Nava but is expected to be promoted to Instructional Director. If or when that happens, Welch will oversee 20th Street Elementary, Nevin Elementary, Julian Nava’s middle and high schools, as well as Jefferson High School.

“[Welch’s] method of developing high academic standards have worked at other schools,” she said. “That’s how we know that what has been promised us will be fulfilled.”

The 16-page proposal does not specify any consequences if teachers fail to meet their targets. Also absent in the district plan is the budget impact of the changes and additional staff requirements.

For months, the parent union tried to persuade the school’s administration to adopt many of the same goals outlined in the plan, according to Gabe Rose, Chief Strategy Officer of Parent Revolution, a group that works with parents to improve their schools. But it was only after gathering signatures from 51 percent of parents, the minimum required to force major changes and win the right to replace its staff and teachers, that Superintendent Ramon Cortines and other district officials agreed to meet with the community.

“They were trying to get a plan without the petitions, and that didn’t work,” Rose told LA School Report. But with the signatures in hand, he added, “It took some cajoling but they were able to get a fair and stronger plan in place.”

Parent Revolution, a non-profit organization aligned with the education reform movement, has been the key architect in pulling the so-called Parent Trigger in California. Since 2012, it has helped parent unions take over three schools, including two in LAUSD — 24th Street, which was converted into a charter school for grades 5 through 8, and Weigand Avenue Elementary, where parents replaced the principal. Two other campuses — West Athens and Haddon Avenue elementary schools — used the petitions as leverage to negotiate changes.

Former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy had previously argued that the district was exempt from the Parent Trigger this school year by a federal waiver from the No Child Left Behind law. But Deasy resigned in October, and interim Cortines lifted the ban in November.

Anyone interested can enter a contest to go “lowriding” with Lopez around Los Angeles in a vintage lowrider, join him for a meal at one of his favorite LA restaurants and be put up in a four-star hotel for two nights. The contest works like a charity raffle with the winner randomly selected. The cost to enter spans from $10 to $10,000, and the more one spends the higher the chances to win are. 

Lopez graduated from San Fernando High School in 1979 and has previously donated funds and participated in charities for San Fernando and LAUSD schools. In 2011, the auditorium at San Fernando Elementary, where Lopez said he first performed at the age of 6, was named after him.

Robotics students gather for film screening

About 900 students on robotics teams from 11 LA Unified schools are gathering at 4:30 p.m. today at the Cesar Chavez Auditorium at San Fernando High School for a screening of the film “Spare Parts,” according to a district press release.

The film is based on a true story about a team of robotics students from Phoenix who were undocumented immigrants and beat MIT students in a robotics competition. Co-starring in the film as the students’ teacher is … George Lopez.

Actors Carolos Penavega and Alexa Penavega from the film are expected to be in attendance, according to a district spokesperson.

‘Parent Trigger’ pulled in Orange County

Parents at Palm Lane Elementary School in Anaheim have filed petitions to overhaul their school through the state Parent Empowerment Act of 2010. It is the first school in Orange County to use the so-called “parent trigger” law, according to the California Center for Parent Empowerment.

A press release from the Center said the school “has been identified by the California Department of Education as an underperforming school since 2003, posting an anemic 746 Academic Performance Index, dropping 33 API points in the last three years. Student testing results indicate that 60 percent of 5th graders are below basic levels of proficiency in mathematics, while 63 percent are below basic levels of proficiency in English Language Arts.” 

Expulsions, suspensions fall in California and LAUSD

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson yesterday announced a 15.2 drop in the number of students suspended and a 20 percent drop in the number of students expelled in 2013-14. It is the second year in a row the two statistics have declined, according to a press release from Torlakson’s office.

In LAUSD, suspensions fell 25.5 percent, according the Los Angeles Daily News, which also pointed out that African American students received 32.3 percent of suspensions while only making up 9.2 percent of the entire student body, a suggestion that the district still has progress to make on the issue.

The statewide drop was attributed to a focus on “restorative justice,” which LA Unified has committed to enacting at every school by 2020.

“These numbers show that the work of the department, districts, teachers, parents, and students around the state is paying off by keeping more students in school and learning,” Torlakson said in a press release. “You can have the best facilities, the best teachers, and the best curriculum in the world, but none of that matters if students are not in school. That’s why we have put so much effort into increasing school attendance and reducing expulsions and suspensions and will continue to do so.”

Torlakson to celebrate reelection

After defeating challenger Marshall Tuck in November and being officially re-sworn into office on Jan. 5, Torlakson is holding a Southern California inauguration reception on Friday at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica.

New York magazine profiles ‘the most controversial woman in school reform’

New York magazine this week profiled Campbell Brown, the former TV journalist and CNN anchor who has become the face of the education reform movement on the East Coast. Brown is the founder of the Partnership for Educational Justice, a group that has filed a lawsuit in New York state similar to the Vergara v. California case that challenged teacher job protection laws.

LA Unified’s Fremont High School

The California Department of Education released its annual list of 1,000 underperforming schools earlier this month. The list includes 95 from LA Unified, and students attending them can now apply for an open enrollment transfer to any other public school in California for the next academic year.

The list is compiled each year as a result of the Parent Empowerment Act of 2010, which created the “Parent Trigger” act and the Romero Open Enrollment Act. 

Until recently, it looked as if the list would be irrelevant to parents at LA Unified looking to use it to enact their parent trigger powers, after former Superintendent John Deasy proclaimed over the summer that the district believed it was not subject to the Parent Trigger act this academic year.

However, Deasy’s replacement, Ramon Cortines, has reversed course and said the law would apply to the district this year.

The act allows for parents to make sweeping changes at an underperforming school if over 50 percent of them sign a petition. The changes can include firing the principal, replacing 50 percent of the staff and converting to a charter school.

The schools on the underperforming list apply to transfer requests for the 2015-16 academic year. The list is comprised primarily using API scores, but since California did not calculate 2014 API scores as a result of the state transitioning to Common Core testing, the list was based on 2013 API scores.

The new list is not the same as last year’s list, which also used the 2013 scores, as it was adjusted based on schools’ opening or closing, schools that converted to or from charter status and schools that changed to or from a school type excluded from the Romero Open Enrollment Act.

The state list includes 687 elementary schools, 165 middle schools and 148 high schools, and does not apply to charter schools.

Among the high schools this year is Jefferson High, which has been in the headlines as a result of major scheduling problems the schools has experienced, leading a judge to order the state to intervene. The ACLU and Public Counsel, which represent the plaintiffs in the case, are currently seeking state intervention at Fremont High and Dorsey High, which are both also on the list.

“As one of Superintendent Cortines’s first moves, it’s a sign that the district will be respectful of the law,” Ben Austin, founder of the group that helps parents organize and enact the take-over of a failing campus, told LA School Report.

“It indicates that Cortines wants to work collaboratively with parents and parent unions,” he added.

The state Parent Trigger law allows parents to make changes at their children’s school if a majority of parents sign a petition demanding improvements. So far, it has been used for only a handful of schools in California.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines and Deputy Superintendent Michelle King met with Austin last week to discuss the moratorium. In an interview with LA School Report a day later, Cortines confirmed the district’s change in policy.

“I believe in parent choice, and I mean parent choice. There is no ban,” Cortines said, adding that he had already notified the author of the law, former Senator Gloria Romero, about his position.

However, several district officials said they know of no such change. When asked about it last week General Counsel David Holmquist said he had been unaware of Cortines’s decision.

Former Superintendent John Deasy had argued that the district was exempt from the Parent Trigger by a federal waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law, allowing LA Unified and seven other California school districts to create their own metrics for academic performance in the temporary absence of statewide standards.

The statewide tests were eliminated last year, in anticipation of computerized tests based on the Common Core State Standards, which begin this spring.

In Deasy’s view, the law could not be used this year because of the change in statewide testing; use of the Parent Trigger laws requires that a school demonstrate poor academic performance two consecutive years, based on the same metrics.

At the time of Deasy’s decision, Romero said she expressed anger that the district would undermine parent empowerment by invalidating the law, and Parent Revolution called the district’s legal logic “laughable.” In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Education, which granted the waiver and was asked to clarify its conditions, says neither the federal government nor any other entity can override a state law.

In a letter written almost a year ago, Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle wrote, “The requirements to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) and to identify schools for improvement, corrective action and restructuring have not been waived, and any State laws or regulations, including those related to AYP or school improvement status, are not affected by the waivers granted to your district.”

Romero appealed to Cortines to overturn Deasy’s edict, embracing the spirit of the law in his first school board meeting last month.

But when asked about Cortines’ decision, Romero said, “Legally, there is no ban. What they’re lifting is a false exemption.”

At 10:00 a.m., the board is set to hear an update on the troubled computer system, MiSiS, which, has caused management and scheduling snafus at several schools. The board is also set to vote on the terms and conditions of the employment contract for Cortines as well as hear public comment.

In a closed-door session to follow, of note is a late addition to the agenda of an item listed as ‘Public Employment, Chief Deputy Superintendent of Schools,’  a possible look at the employment Michelle King, who was passed over to serve as interim superintendent after she offered up her services to replace Deasy.  The agenda is here.

At 2:00 p.m., the Committee of the Whole is scheduled to meet to discuss the controversy over the district’s temporary suspension of the Parent Trigger Law will be discussed with a presentation by Gloria Romero, former California State Senator. The committee’s agenda is here.

At 3:15 p.m., the full board will return for a Special Session to report on the labor negotiations between the teachers union and the district. Agenda is here.

At 4:15 p.m. the Committee on Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment is set to meet to discuss, among other items, the Public School Choice Initiative, first launched in 2011 by then interim Superintendent Cortines. That agenda is  here.

Advocates of the controversial law argued that that an overhaul was required for progress. Short of parent testimonials, advocates have had little evidence to prove themselves right since the state suspended standardized testing as districts transition to the Common Core.

Until now.

One set of statewide tests — the California Standards Test in science, strangely omitted from the testing ban — suggests students at the triggered schools have made impressive progress over the last two years.

True, the testing sample is quite small, but the results are positive.

Of the fifth graders who took the science exam at 24th Street Elementary, the first school within LA Unified to undergo a complete overhaul, almost twice as many scored Proficient on the exam over those who took the test in the pre-trigger year 2013. The percentage of students who rated as Advanced skyrocketed to 33 from 2.

Ben Austin, founder of Parent Revolution, a non-profit group that helped the two schools organize their petition to pull the parent trigger, conceded that the single test is a narrow measuring stick but insisted that it’s an indicator of wider success.

At 24th Street, LA Unified runs pre-K through fourth grade while Crown Preparatory Academy runs fifth through eighth grades.

“Potentially, the test scores speak to two things,” he told LA School Report, referring to the hybrid nature of the campus. “One is the value for children in these types of collaborative partnerships when adults put their ideological differences aside.”

“And it speaks to the very good work that Crown Prep has done as a charter school.”

At Desert Trails Preparatory Academy, formerly Desert Trails Elementary, which was the first in the country to be converted into a charter school as a result of California’s Parent Empowerment law, students made even more impressive gains. More students tested Advanced or Proficient in science than anytime in the past 10 years, including almost four times as many as those in 2013.

In addition to 24th Street Elementary, a handful of other LA Unified schools have leveraged the parent trigger law to make changes on campus: Haddon Avenue Elementary in Pacoima, West Athens Elementary and Lenox Elementary in Baldwin Hills, and Weigand Elementary in Watts.

Gloria Romero, former CA State Senator

Gloria Romero, the former state senator who authored the California Parent Trigger law is asking LA Unified board president Richard Vladovic to schedule a public discussion on the district’s legal opinion that the law does not apply this year.

District lawyers say the Federal waiver granted LA Unified and seven other California school districts, allowing them to to create their own metrics for academic performance in the temporary absence of statewide standards, sets the law aside.

“Of course, I dispute the legal interpretation and I am in the process of seeking a state opinion on the matter,” she wrote to Vladovic. “Nothing that I have seen lends support to the legal opinion of LAUSD.”

She adds that none of the other districts granted a waiver has made such an interpretation.

Vladovic’s chief of staff, Chris Torres, said in an email that Vladovic intends to help arrange to put her request on the agenda of a future meeting.

The district’s legal interpretation is important, so far as parent groups who want to enact changes this year through the state law, which permits parents to initiate action at their children’s school if they can secure signatures from a majority of school parents.

The district is contending that without state-approved metrics for measuring academic performance while Common Core testing is phasing in, the law cannot apply because action through Parent Trigger requires two years of data to show a school is failing.

In her letter, Romero questions several aspects of the district’s decision, including whether the board was aware of such an exemption and why the legal decision was made without public discussion or announcement.

She also asks Vladovic that if the district was certain in its legal analysis, why did the district negotiate with parents at West Athens Elementary School for changes in exchange for their assurance not to use the Parent Trigger law, when in the absence of the law, the parents would have had no such leverage.

Finally, she asks, “Perhaps even more importantly — how could a District simply erase away a law and make a pact to keep this information away from the public?

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/romero-pressing-for-lausd-hearing-on-trigger-waiver/feed/ 4 https://www.laschoolreport.com/outside-group-challenging-lausds-view-of-parent-trigger/ https://www.laschoolreport.com/outside-group-challenging-lausds-view-of-parent-trigger/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2014 19:30:23 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=27624

Gloria Romero

* UPDATED

Parent Revolution, an organization that helps parents petition for change at poor-performing schools, is disputing an LA Unified legal opinion that says the state law that gives parents that right is invalid this year.

The conflict came to light in an LA Times story this morning, citing an opinion from a district lawyer sent to Gloria Romero, the former California lawmaker who wrote the 2010 “Parent Trigger” law.

Romero, who founded the California Center for Parent Empowerment last year, said in an interview this morning she felt “angry and betrayed” by a legal decision that was reached last fall by the district but not shared with her until she learned about it three weeks ago.

“I’m not saying LAUSD is wrong on the legal interpretation; I just don’t know, and that’s why I’m seeking another legal interpretation from the state,” she said, “But LAUSD’s decision violates the spirit and intent of the law.”

“What I want to know,” she added, “is why did they keep this quiet all this time.”

The district’s opinion stems from a Federal waiver granted LA Unified and seven other California school districts, allowing them to to create their own metrics for academic performance in the temporary absence of statewide standards — measures used to determine whether a school is failing.

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy said in an interview that the metrics used by LA Unified and the other districts granted the waiver still give parents the right to use the Parent Trigger law, so long as a school has been deemed in need of improvement for two consecutive years, ending with the 2014-2015 school year.

Under the waiver, he said, “We are completely aligned with the state law.”

California’s previous statewide standards were set aside for two years — 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 — while districts phase in the Common Core State Standards curriculum.

Romero said the district’s position was clarified in a letter she had requested and finally received two days ago from Kathleen Collins, a district lawyer.

Parent Revolution called the district’s legal interpretation “laughable,” insisting that a district has overridden state law. “The only entities that are capable of altering or invalidating California’s Parent Empowerment Act are the state legislature or a judge. Neither has done so,” the group said.

Parent Revolution also cited a letter to Deasy from the Department of Education in Washington, which granted the waiver, that says neither the federal government nor any other entity can override a state law.

In her Nov. 22 letter (starts on page 6), Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle wrote, “The requirements to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) and to identify schools for improvement, corrective action and restructuring have not been waived, and any State laws or regulations, including those related to AYP or school improvement status, are not affected by the waivers granted to your district.”

Romero said the confluence of federal law, state law and a district decision might ultimately lead to a lawsuit to clarify who has the ultimate authority in the matter. Such a lawsuit would require plaintiffs, presumably parents whose efforts to use the Parent Trigger law would be blocked by the district.

Gabe Rose, a spokesman for Parent Revolution, said his organization is currently working with several groups of parents who are “considering options for improving their children’s schools, including the use of Parent Trigger.”

* Adds explanation from LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy

The advocacy group, which pushes for Parent Trigger laws across the country, plans to hold a one-day “Parent Power Convention” in October, the first meeting of its kind. It’s timed to coincide with the countdown to the fall elections and “will incorporate vital discussions on the type of laws” the group seeks to enact.

In California, the parent trigger law creates a pathway for parents to make changes at their schools by collecting signatures of a majority of parents who want change. It has been used so far in only two schools, 24th Street Elementary in LA Unified and Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto.

“It should be clear that in the wake of the historic decision in Vergara, Parent Union leaders immediately grasped the opportunity and the responsibility to build upon their hard won seat at table around school site decisions into a seat at the table in Sacramento to advocate for the interests of all children in California,” Ben Austin, executive director for Parent Revolution, said in a statement.

Organizers expect candidates in the final days of their respective campaigns will be eager to gain the endorsement of Parent Union chapters, which they claim are a rising and expanding political constituency in California.

Few details about the event are available at this time, but a spokesperson confirmed it will “definitely be interactive.”

West Athens Elementary School

It now appears that just the specter of a “Parent Trigger” action is enough for parents to get what they want.

Lerina Cordero, mother of a first grade boy at West Athens Elementary in south Los Angeles, says parents there had been trying for years to get the school’s leadership to stop rampant bullying and to change an overall attitude of complacency with the school’s academic performance.

“But it wasn’t until we said we were going to use the Parent Trigger law, that the principal finally sat down to meet with us,” Cordero told LA School Report. “And when we saw that they were willing to listen to us and collaborate with us, we decided we didn’t have to use the law.”

Now, six months after pressing the district for changes, the West Athens parents union, Aguilas de West Athens (AWA), and district officials are prepared to sign a Partnership Agreement, a plan to spend $300,000 on new staffing positions to address their concerns and roll out professional development programs for teachers.

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy is joining parents and school officials at the school tomorrow to sign the agreement.

The so-called “Parent Trigger” is a state-approved method of parents forcing change at a public school. It begins with a petition, and if a majority of school parents sign, the process launches, as it did just two years ago, when 24th Street Elementary became the first LA Unified campus to be taken over under the law and converted into a charter school.

The West Athens deal represents the first time LA Unified has negotiated with parents before they gathered a single Parent Trigger signature and negotiated a financial settlement.

In two other cases — Lennox Middle School and Haddon Elementary School — parents were in the middle of a signature gathering campaign before the district stepped in to “collaborate” with helping the schools resolve their problems without financial contributions.

Rosalinda Lugo, the area Director of Instruction, says that’s only part of the story at West Athens. She said even as negotiations with the parents were proceeding, the school has made impressive academic strides. The 2013 API score went up to 721, still shy of the state standard but an 86 point gain from 2010. As a result, the school has been recognized as a CORE Waiver Reward school, which means it is held up as a model for academic improvement.

She also said the $300,000 — which will pay for a full-time psychologist, three days of psychiatrist social worker, a full-time attendance officer, an additional teacher assistant, and a three hour campus aide, one supervision aide, and two community representatives — is not “extra money” for the school. The funding for these jobs is being drawn from 2014-15 school budget.

“The school site council met over several days and decided to use categorical funds and some of the flexibility in the new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to fund these additional positions,” Lugo told LA School Report.

And the shift in dollars affects other services.

“As in most cases, whenever you buy something new, something else has to go,” Lugo lamented. “You can’t purchase everything you want, unfortunately.”

One of the things that will have to go at West Athens next year, she said, is an Instructional Coach, someone who helps teachers refine their instructional practices.

“The teachers are going to have to take some of those responsibilities on themselves” and they will get similar support from the district’s new Common Core training, Lugo said.