BESE approves new petition process

Louisiana’s top school board has approved rules that, for the first time, will allow parents to petition the state to take over failing public schools.

The measure, known as “parent trigger,” was part of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education package that emerged from the 2012 legislative session.

It is modeled somewhat after a California law pushed by a self-styled Clinton and Obama Democrat as a way to allow communities to spark “radical change” in education.

Jindal touted the change as a way to give parents another tool when their child is attending a D or F school, as rated by the state.

The new policies were approved earlier this week by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE.

Under current rules, failing public schools face state takeovers after four years.

The new law would allow that to happen after three years through a petition process.

The key hurdle is that takeover advocates would have to collect signatures from 50 percent of the parents or guardians of students attending the school, plus one more, and submit the petition to the state Department of Education.

Under the plan, the department will be required to post information on its website about parent petitions, including sample petitions, what schools can be targeted, how many signatures would be required and procedures and deadlines for completing the process.

Schools carrying state-issued letter grades of D or F for three consecutive years would be on the list.

Nearly one out of five public schools in Louisiana meets that criteria now, according to the department.

The petitions would include the name of the student, the relationship to the student of the man or woman signing the petition, date signed, contact information and consent information that makes clear the information is part of a public record.

The rules prohibit parents and others circulating the petition from being harassed, which has been alleged in California, where the first such law was enacted in 2010.

That includes intimidation, threats or efforts to hinder the name-gathering process.

Violators would face criminal prosecution.

School, district and school board employees would be prohibited from using public resources to back or oppose a petition.

State school takeover advocates would have 90 days to collect the names after the state releases the list of schools that can be targeted, which is usually in October.

If backers fall short they would have another 30 days to collect enough valid names.

If successful state officials would post such a notice on the department’s website and spell out procedures for school takeover opponents to challenge the names.

The agency would be required to accept challenges to any names for at least 15 days after notification that the petition was finished.

Challenges could include charges that the student did not attend the school, that the signature was a forgery, that it was signed as a result of harassment or because of the promise of a gift.

Erroneous dates with the signature and misspelled names would not be considered acceptable grounds for a challenge.

The BESE-approved rules also say that “signatures shall not be discounted over technicalities if the clear intent of the parent or legal guardian was to support the petition.”

If the department concludes that the petition has enough signatures, the state superintendent of education would have the authority to move the school to the Recovery School District, which is where troubled public schools are placed under state control.

It could then be run directly by the state or converted to a charter school, which is supposed to offer innovative classroom methods.

Lottie Beebe, a BESE member from Breaux Bridge, said parents should have the option of submitting petitions to return schools from the Recovery School District to the local school board’s jurisdiction.

No such provision is in the new law.

BESE President Penny Dastugue said such a change would require study, in part because of existing contracts that govern public schools under state control.

Comments

1) Comment by ByGeorge - 23/06/2012

Someone will have to explain why a bill which allows parents to petition the state to take over failing public schools is a bad idea. As a parent, to my mind the only risk is the one run by the fish in the frying pan concerned that if it jumps, it might be into the fire. Call me Miss Lonely, but as a parent who has children in our state’s not so finest schools, it seems to me that when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. A petition of 50 percent of the parents required to be obtained over a period of just 90 days does not seem so much a trigger as it does an impossibly high and almost insurmountable barrier. So that this article is placed in its proper context, note that just 6 days ago, the US Conference of Mayors – led by Democrats – voted to endorse, unanimously, just these types of parent trigger laws. Teachers and their unions are in the same position as that Mississippi judge during the 1940’s who after reading the Sermon on the Mount to his questioning group of white Sunday School students, was forced to state, “I feel sure that Jesus Christ has been misquoted on some of these statements.” How teachers have gotten themselves in the position that they are now in, the arrogance, the hypocrisy, the willful blindness and lack of awareness, the wrong paths taken and right paths not taken, the absence of vision and unclear understanding of their mission and of just what their job is, will be hard for historians of education to explain. But one thing is already clear: no single conservative politician or group of politicians – liberals or conservatives - could have outdone the damage that teachers have done to themselves. Somebody needs to get some sense.

2) Comment by timesright - 23/06/2012

The process may be there. The law is wrong. It is just another ALEC modeled bill. Please read the following excerpt written by Rita Solnet, one of the founders of Parents Across America (PAA). Parents and educators fought long and hard in Florida this past spring to kill a similar bill. They won! One must remember there was time to debate the bill in Florida. Louisianians did not have that same democratic privilege. California passed the nation’s first parent trigger law in 2010. Since then, similar bills have been introduced in many states around the country, with language written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC), an organization that promotes a right-wing agenda. But despite the misleading accounts of representatives from the Astroturf organization Parent Revolution, flown in from California to testify before the Florida legislature, the law has never been used successfully in that state or anywhere else. "The Parent Trigger was first conceived by an organization called Parent Revolution, founded by a charter operator and funded by the Gates, Broad and Walton Family Foundations (the latter of Wal-Mart fame). The law squeaked through the California legislature in early 2010 but has had led to no school turnarounds. Instead, it has ignited chaos and controversy in the two communities where petition campaigns have been tried. In Compton, the effort collapsed amid allegations of fraud on both sides. In Adelanto, parents were asked to sign two different petitions, though only one, calling for charter conversion, was submitted to the authorities (LA Times, 2/19/12)."------> http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2012/03/parents-across-america-hails-defeat-of-florida%E2%80%99s-parent-trigger-bill/