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Monday, April 1, 2013

Parent Trigger “Uses Parents Like a Cheap Dinner Napkin | Scathing Purple Musings

Parent Trigger “Uses Parents Like a Cheap Dinner Napkin | Scathing Purple Musings:


Parent Trigger “Uses Parents Like a Cheap Dinner Napkin

The following is an opinion piece from Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder of FundEducationNow.org. She has granted permission to publish it here.
Despite a bruising defeat in the 2012 Florida Legislative session, parent trigger is something proponents are too stubborn to drop. Anointed 2013 sponsors Rep. Carlos Trujillo and Sen. Kelli Stargel, struggling to re-position their brand say, “We want to give parents a seat at the table.”
Thanks, but no thanks. Parent trigger uses parents like a stack of cheap dinner napkins. It “empowers” us to do the grunt work then mutes our voice. Parents are expected to blindly pull the trigger without any guarantees and transfer a valuable public asset to for-profit charter chain investors — the very folks who funded the creation of parent trigger in the first place.
Every Florida parent, regardless of socioeconomic status, has the legal power right now to set the table thanks to public School Advisory Councils (SAC). Before Florida politicians got dollar signs in their eyes over privatizing