San Francisco Schools: Charters' latest: sham 'parents' union'

Charter-school mogul announces sham "parents' union" (L.A. Daily News, 7/7/06):

It's amusing that the supposed parents' list of tenets includes higher pay for teachers, given that a primary goal of the charter movement is to bust teachers' unions. Also, nobody who has spent any time around a cross-section of kids could really believe that college-prep curriculum is appropriate for all students. See further comments after the story.

Parents union enters LAUSD reform debate
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Stepping into the battle to reform Los Angeles Unified, the founder of Green Dot charter schools announced Thursday he's launched a parents union that will demand small, safe and high-achieving public schools based on the model he created.

The nonprofit Los Angeles Parents Union, founded by Steve Barr, also will actively lobby for proposed legislation that would give Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa greater authority over the school district and the teachers union more control at local schools.

But the main goal of the Parents Union will be to advocate and promote Barr's vision for the LAUSD by implementing the six tenets he used when he created Green Dot campuses. And Villaraigosa, Barr said, has promised to go along with his plan.

"If we're successful, we'll create the best public school system in the country and change the dynamics of the community," Barr said at a downtown news conference.

Barr said he became convinced of the need to organize parents after traveling to Sacramento last month to testify in favor of the Los Angeles Unified School District reform bill. He was baffled, he said, when he saw 50 parents who had been bused to the state capital by the LAUSD claiming to represent the views of all district parents.

"I thought, that's a sham being pulled off. Nobody's organized parents in a real way. When I saw the parents, they were not the parents I knew.

"And I don't know what they do," he said. "They seem to speak for I don't know who and I don't know what for. They seemingly speak in unison with those who protect the status quo, like the teachers union and the LAUSD bureaucracy."

Newly elected to her second term as president of the LAUSD board, Marlene Canter expressed concern that the Parents Union was created solely to organize support for the reform legislation.

"I feel that it's very, very important for parents to be organized, to have a voice. There are many parent groups and organizations that are independent and work on what's in the best interest for parents and families.

"I'm fearful that a parents union that is attached to supporting the legislation is really a politically driven movement."

Barr, who broke up Jefferson High into six charter schools after organizing its parents, said he already has hundreds of members and will enlist more at organizational meetings to be held throughout the LAUSD.

Parent Ignacio Garcia, whose three children attended Jefferson High, said the Parents Union will ensure that Los Angeles Unified looks out for the best interests of the students.

"I think it's time for parents to say `Enough,' for us to be united, to claim our rights and our benefits," said Garcia, who lives in South Los Angeles.

Parent David Wyles of Playa Del Rey said while he's not sure he supports Barr's new group, he does believe in increasing parental involvement.

"Unless the parents are included, children will not make progress," he said at the news conference, attended by about 70 other parents.

"Big bureaucracies like LAUSD don't respond to individual parents. They respond to collaborations of parents."

But starting up such parent organizations has its challenges, said Bill Ring, chairman of the Parent Collaborative at the LAUSD, who tried to start a parents union four years ago.

His group's 101 elected parents and community members represent 750,000 students and their parents in the LAUSD.

"One of the things that was so challenging getting a union started years ago was the funding — it's important to know where your money is coming from," said Ring, who's working on creating an independent association of parents of his own.

Barr said he has not yet accepted any donations, and will be selective about the sources of funding to maintain the group's independence.

PARENTAL DEMANDS

Here are the six tenets the Los Angeles Parents Union wants to implement in the LAUSD:
Cap enrollment at 500 students per campus.
Mandate college prep curriculum for all students.
Delegate control over budgets, curriculum and hiring to administrators
and teachers at each school.
Allocate more money to the classroom and increase teacher pay.
Increase parental participation.
Keep campuses open later for community.

Fellow blogger Nestwife has added a critique of her own, which I'm pasting here.

Just for starters, a couple of things jump out of the "parents' union" list of demands.
Cap enrollment at 500 students per campus.
Mandate college prep curriculum for all students.
Delegate control over budgets, curriculum and hiring to administrators
and teachers at each school.
Allocate more money to the classroom and increase teacher pay.
Increase parental participation.
Keep campuses open later for community.
First, if campus enrollment is capped at 500, I wonder what effect that would have on the ability of the schools to offer a full range of extracurriculars, like sports teams and band/orchestra. What we have found here is that the smaller high schools either forego these amenities entirely, or they have to choose just a couple of sports (say, baseball, basketball and volleyball, but no football, or swimming, or fencing, or badminton, or soccer, or softball, etc), or band but no orchestra, or no music at all.

Same thing with languages — a population of 500 is not enough to support a choice of foreign languages, which is why 2600-student Lowell (High School, San Francisco Unified School District) has about 9 languages to choose from, and Gateway (SFUSD charter high school), with about 400 kids, has Spanish For All.

Then there is the issue of AP classes. A population of 500 kids is not enough to support more than a handful of AP — and yet they are demanding a "college prep" curriculum? Well, having ALL AP classes, as some schools for the gifted do, would accomplish that, but then the schools would have to be sorting their kids by ability, and lumping the gifted kids together. That doesn't seem to be part of the demands, so I assume that these schools will not be doing that.

Schools of 500 which serve a full range of abilites will not be able to offer more than a couple of AP courses. Is that an improvement over the current setup?

Next, the delegating of control over the curriculum, hiring and budget to the administration and teachers seems to be at odds with the demand for more parental involvement. The Ed Code requires school site councils, which must at the high school level be composed of 25% parents/guardians, and 25% students. Turning such decisions over to each school's site council would accomplish what seems to be the goal (getting these decsisions out of the hands of central office and into the hands of those closest to the students) while including parents in these important decisions too. As it stands, it sounds like this so-called "parents' union" is demanding that parents be involved, but excluding them from the most important decision making at the school. I guess this charter school guy believes that parental involvement should be limited to things like running fund raisers and going on field trips. Oh, and of course, going to sacramento to lobby for more schools like the ones he has created.

Suddenly I am reminded of the time Edison Schools was paid $3 million to write a report on how to fix the Philadelphia school system. When the report came out, guess what it said? Yes, the only way to fix that school district was, according to Edison, to turn management of the whole district over to ... Edison!