By Patrick Range McDonald
(From LA Weekly, February 15th, 2013)
After Los Angeles Unified School District board members approved a Parent Trigger earlier this week, mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel refused to comment on the historic vote, which allows parents to take over a chronically failing elementary school in West Adams.
Now mayoral candidate Kevin James and two Parent Trigger heavyweights are speaking out about that silence — and Garcetti and Greuel’s commitment to education reform is being questioned. With an alarming 21 percent dropout rate at L.A. Unified, it’s no small matter.
On Tuesday, L.A. Unified board members approved the first Parent Trigger to take place in the district, which is the second largest public school system in the United States. The Parent Trigger is a California law that allows parents to institute changes at a chronically failing school through petition.
In this case, parents sought to bring reform to 24th Street Elementary School in West Adams, which serves mostly poor Latino students.
Garcetti is looking to win a solid chunk of the Latino vote, but he refused to reply to L.A. Weekly earlier this week about where he stood on the Parent Trigger law and the recent actions taken by L.A. Unified School board members. Greuel also declined to comment.
Mayoral candidates Kevin James, Emanuel Pleitez, and Jan Perry all told the Weekly that they support the Parent Trigger law.
Read the full post here.