Education Week - October 16, 2013 - 18

California ‘Parent Trigger’ School Pushes to Gain Traction
ementary into a charter school. The
two-year campaign, made possible
under California’s 2010 Parent
Empowerment Act, pitted parent
against parent, denigrated some
of the school’s former teachers, and
interfered with students’ learning,
some here say.
Debbie Tarver, Desert Trails’ charter operator and executive director,
said she is trying to insulate the
school from the controversy brought
on by use of California’s first-in-thenation parent-trigger law, which permits parents to petition for sweeping
education improvement measures
and staffing changes at low-performing schools.
Proponents of the law believe
it gives parents a long-deserved
right to demand change at deeply
troubled schools; critics say it’s an
ill-conceived reform effort that gives
outside operators with questionable
motives undue influence in local
communities.
“We cannot deny these students
another year of being educated,” Ms.
Tarver said emphatically. “You want
to see a battle or a fight going on, …
that will be my battle.”
Current teachers and staff members at the school, located about 80
miles northeast of Los Angeles, say
their primary focus is improving
student achievement and nurturing
young minds. Parents say they’re
encouraged by the school’s stronger
emphasis on academics.
And several of the 350 former
Desert Trails students who returned said that although they
miss their friends and former
teachers, they’re relieved to have a
school climate with far fewer disciplinary problems.
“It’s like a family here,” parent
Marquitia Salah said, after walking her sons to their classrooms on a
recent morning. Ms. Salah, who enrolled two of her sons in the charter
school, and whose children previously
attended school in another district,
added: “For me, this has been one of
the best decisions of my life.”
But it’s unclear whether this community of roughly 32,000 people who
are weary of the media spotlight—
which included “Won’t Back Down,”
a Hollywood movie inspired by the
parent-trigger law—will support
Desert Trails and its 540 students
again. Ms. Tarver, who is modeling
Desert Trails after her successful
charter school in nearby Hesperia,
Calif., admits she’s facing tough odds.
“To have to turn the school over
to an outside agency that you don’t
know anything about was hard on
them,” Ms. Tarver said of people in
the community. “I understood the bitterness. But I wasn’t the person that
caused this.”

Photos by Eric Grigorian for Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Parent Cynthia Ramirez,
center, the lead
organizer of the Desert
Trails Parent Union, at a
union meeting with other
parents in Adelanto,
Calif. Members of the
group say they want to
remain vigilant and
involved after initiating
the creation of Desert
Trails Preparatory
Academy, a charter
school.

“

We were just a
bunch of angry
parents who didn’t
like what our school
was doing.”
CYNTHIA RAMIREZ
Desert Trails Preparatory
Academy parent

Parent Power
Still vigilant after the contentious
campaign to reinvent their former
failing school are the parents who
took up the fight with the help of
Parent Revolution, a parent-triggeradvocacy group based in Los Angeles. The nonprofit group is funded
18 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 16, 2013 | www.edweek.org

in part by the Eli and Edythe Broad
Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, and the Walton Family
Foundation.
(The Gates Foundation helps support Education Week’s coverage of
business and K-12 innovation; Walton helps support coverage of parentempowerment issues. The newspaper
retains sole editorial control over that
coverage.)
The Desert Trails Parent Union, a
group that formed to garner support
for the parent trigger, holds meetings
in the public park adjacent to the
school in plain view of Ms. Tarver’s
office window. A few union members
walk around campus wearing Parent
Revolution T-shirts emblazoned with
the slogan “I am the revolution.”
But Ms. Tarver is trying to build a
relationship with the 8,400-student
Adelanto Elementary School District
which is the authorizer for her threeyear charter school contract. She
is trying to distance the new school
from the politics and debate surrounding the parent union.
In September, she wrote a detailed letter to Desert Trails parents stressing the differences between the parent union and the
academy’s new parent-advisory
council, which will help staff members implement school programs.
While she applauded the union for
its past efforts, she added that the
school must “maintain a positive
relationship with our authorizer.”
Ms. Tarver encourages parents to
support the school by wearing Desert
Trails T-shirts sporting its new logo:
an owl wearing a cap and gown.
Taking a break from volunteer duties in a kindergarten class, the parent union’s lead organizer, Cynthia
Ramirez, said the group understands
that its activities must be separate

from the school. Ms. Ramirez said
the group strongly supports the new
school and its leader.
“The tension left the minute the
district left the school,” said Ms.
Ramirez, a mother of two Desert
Trails students. “The teachers are
here because they want to be here.
They’re happy. You can see it in
their eyes.”
Still, she said, parent-union members, emboldened by their Desert
Trails petition drive, want to leverage their newly acquired power and
knowledge to collaborate with schools
and the district to boost student
achievement at other schools. The
union of about 150 parents is actively
recruiting new members across the
struggling Adelanto district and may
even consider changing its name to
be more representative of the entire
community.
“We were just a bunch of angry parents who didn’t like what our school
was doing,” Ms. Ramirez said.

Some Regrets
Yet at least one former parentunion leader regrets the divisive
struggle over Desert Trails and is
trying to create his own locally based
parent-empowerment group.
Once an ardent Parent Revolution
supporter, Joe Morales said he became disillusioned as tensions began
to mount during the campaign.
Mr. Morales, who has two children
enrolled at Desert Trails, claims that
Parent Revolution organizers encouraged parent-union members to
spread false information about the
school’s teachers and parents who
opposed the trigger.
“Parent Revolution left a lot of
heartache and a lot enemies behind,”
said Mr. Morales, who is still a Desert

Trails Parent Union member. “They
didn’t know how to heal the people
before they left.”
Ben Austin, Parent Revolution’s
executive director, disputes claims
that his organization intimidated or
harassed Adelanto residents. He said
the group has a strict code of conduct,
which includes the so-called Los Angeles Times rule: “Don’t do anything
in organizing that you wouldn’t
want to see on the front page of the
L.A. Times.”
Still, Mr. Austin admits that his
group is trying to flesh out the role
of parent unions once a parent-trigger campaign ends. Parent Revolution is reaching out to the National
pta for guidance, he said.
Mr. Austin acknowledges that
his organization made some
mistakes in past parent-trigger
campaigns, particularly a failed
effort in Compton, Calif. He said
the group was too heavy-handed
in running the Compton petition
campaign, rather than letting parents take the lead.
He is adamant, however, that the
parents ran the show in Adelanto.
And he said that contrary to parenttrigger critics’ assertions, no master
plan exists to hand public schools
over to billionaires’ corporations.
“It’s patronizing to think that
low-income parents can’t think for
themselves,” Mr. Austin said in a
telephone interview. “The parent
trigger is helping people who are
traditionally powerless find power
over the education of their own
kids.”
Edwin C. Darden, the director of
education law and national collaboration for Appleseed, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes
social-justice issues and parent engagement, said parent-trigger laws

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