Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Here We Go Again

I presume that you are getting bored with my recurrent theme that “Democrats seem intent on doing things and passing laws that harm the poor the most”.
Well here we go again!

First a little background. In 2010 the Parent Empowerment Act (aka Parent Trigger Law) was passed in California. This allows parents of students in low performing public schools to change the administration typically by changing the school to a charter school. Actually with at least 50% of the school’s parent’s signatures, the parents can opt for a replacement of the school’s administration, replacement of the entire staff, or conversion to a charter school. Actually this is one of the few good laws that every so often come out of Sacramento, as it attempts to insure that the state does what is best for the children.

Palm Lane Elementary School in Anaheim, Ca. has approximately 700 students, mostly Latino, with >50% “English learning” students, and it qualified as an academically low performing school. In 2015, Cecilia Ochoa and 67% of the parents at Palm Lane Elementary voted to petition to have the school converted to a charter school because of its poor performance. To a novice, this would seem to be the perfect situation for the Democrats to stand behind the poor Latino immigrants, their ‘compadres’.

But wait!! . . . as now begins the all-to-familiar saga of the progressives doing all they can to actually keep the poor and the down-trodden . . . poor and down-trodden.

The Anaheim School District denied their petition, and in 2015 Orange County Superior Court Judge, Andrew Banks, found that the district’s rejection of the parent’s petition
“procedurally unfair, unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious”, and he ruled in favor of the parents. The attorney for the parents summed it up nicely when he said, “[this is about] low income parents who wanted to do something about a chronically failing school, but instead they found a hostile school district trying to find every way to stop them”.
Interestingly, the “progressive activists” in Orange County were either apparently silent or voiced active opposition to the parents, while local Anaheim elected officials, Kris Murray and Lucille Kring (both Republican), championed the parent’s cause.

As you would expect, the Anaheim School District appealed, and on 2/23/2017 the case went before California Court of Appeals. Perhaps with the long delay before the Appeals Court trial, the Anaheim School District figured that the original parent litigants would have given up as their children possibly would have moved on to middle school.
In late April, 2017 the three judge panel on the Appeals Court ruled in favor of the Palm Lane Elementary School parents, however, after the verdict, Supt. Linda Wagner said that she did not “anticipate any changes for the 2017-2018 school year”. WTF!!
Is it over?
Is it possible that the Democrat-controlled Teachers Union . . . er . . . The Anaheim School District will next appeal the verdict to the California Supreme Court?
Perhaps the Anaheim School District is still intent on going against the spirit of The Parent Empowerment Act, and will still try to do what is best for the Teachers Union rather than what is best for the children.
Keep in mind that cost of a continuing litigation is seemingly no object to the Anaheim School District as thus far the school district has spent $778,176 on this case in order to insure that the poorly educated Latino students at Palm Lane Elementary continue to remain poorly educated!
Stay tuned!

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