A Superior Court judge has given the parents in a Mojave Desert town who pulled the state’s second “parent trigger” a milestone victory.
San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Steve Malone ruled that the Adelanto School District trustees illegally rejected the petition submitted by a majority of parents to turn Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school. Malone has given the school board a month to approve the petition, and the parents a green light to immediately begin the charter conversion.
The shakeup at the low-performing school won’t happen until the fall of 2013. And the president of the Adelanto school board, Carlos Mendoza, told the Los Angeles Times that he would recommend that the district appeal the decision.
But Malone’s 13-page ruling, made available on Monday, has revived the campaign of the Desert Trails Parents Union to transform their school. And it has come down squarely on the side of parent organizers in interpreting a key provision of regulations, involving signature withdrawals, that the State Board of Education adopted two years ago governing the Parent Trigger law.
via Big win in court for ‘parent trigger’ organizers – by John Fensterwald.