They found the bottle of paint, and all the frustration and anger of “losing” their school boiled over. The paint was hurled across the classroom. Other paint bottles followed, splashing the walls, the windows and the carpeted floor.
Appalling behaviour, no question. “That was when we got a bit carried away” they would later tell the police.
Mindless adolescent vandalism? Maybe, but the vandals were two adult women who had been long-serving parent volunteers at their local school and were distraught at having to clear out their parent meeting room before the school was handed over to a charter-school business.
Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, Calif., was being handed over by the school board to Debra Tarver, a private business owner, who also runs the traditionally oriented LaVerne Preparatory Academy in a nearby district.
The school had fallen victim to California’s Parent Empowerment Act. The law enables parents to force a major overhaul of a low-performing public school if a majority of parents sign a petition. Since California passed its unfortunately nicknamed “parent trigger legislation” in 2010, at least seven other states have adopted similar laws, and forms of the legislation have been considered in more than two dozen other states.
A slim majority of Adelanto parents succeeded in invoking the trigger law and getting the board to approve the new charter operator in January 2013. Their victory followed an 18-month campaign riddled with bureaucratic and legal challenges and allegations of fraud and harassment.
The bitter fight pitted parents against teachers, school board members and other parents.
The Desert Trails Parent Union had run its petition campaign to convert the school to a charter school with the guidance and financial backing of Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles nonprofit formed to help parents use the trigger law.
The extent of the bitterness in the community finally exploded into the vandalism by the two anti-charter parents who had simply come to clean out and hand over the parent room to the new administration.
Under California’s parent-trigger law, if at least 50 per cent of parents at a persistently failing school sign a petition to wrest control, they can pursue one of four options: Force the school district to bring in new staff; force the school district to replace the school’s principal and make other changes, such as modifying teacher contracts or creating smaller classes; convert the school into a charter; or close the school entirely.
The law applies at both public and existing charter schools.
Was this the unpleasant and acrimonious result of what happens when government succumbs to the temptation of trying to legislate school improvement, rather than pursue less traumatic avenues of providing enhanced opportunities for kids and getting a poor-performing school back on track?
Possibly, but the new Desert Trails charter school now has 552 K-6 students, including about 380 students who attended the school last year.
All 26 teachers are new to the school. Desert Trails’ former teachers, who would have had to reapply for a job there and surrender their union benefits, have been reassigned to other district schools.
The school now uses an educational model called differentiated instruction, which aims to teach students at their own pace, letting the best students move on more quickly to higher-level work. Four teachers have moved from a nearby charter school operated by the same company to mentor the rest of the faculty.
Halfway through its first school year under charter management, the newly named Desert Trails Preparatory Academy, now a public charter school, has settled into its new identity and the healing process has begun for the community.
It is certainly a cautionary tale, one that speaks to what happens when government, with only the hammer of legislation at its disposal, acts without consideration of long-term drastic consequences and fails to co-operate and effectively co-manage one of our culture’s critical resources — public schooling.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
