A parental empowerment bill inspired by the California trigger law has now moved through three different committees in the Florida Legislature, and former California Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero has entered the debate. As those who followed the fight on the Pacific Coast know, this is a deeply personal issue to her.

In a brief commentary today in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Ms. Romero reminds us that this issue has cut across party lines and that the end game is not as much about shutting down schools as it is about giving parents a seat at the table. The Florida effort is moving in both chambers with HB 1191 and SB 1718.

Here is a fuller version of her column:

Florida Should Embrace the Parent Trigger

By Gloria Romero

Our children too often function as debit cards for public education, valued in a struggling school system for the cash they bring through the front door. But parents have no such financial interest at stake, and Florida has the chance to give them more of the educational control they deserve. The Parent Empowerment in Education Act, proposed by Rep. Michael Bileca and Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, takes a step toward focusing on the families that schools serve.

I wrote the nation’s first “parent trigger” law, in part because I was frustrated with the lack of urgency in turning around chronically underperforming schools. As a Democratic senator in California, I was tired of the status-quo education interests dictating education policy. Since that bold bipartisan bill was signed into law, some 20 other states have sought to grant this power to parents across the nation. Florida is the latest state to do so. (more…)

Michelle Rhee spent this afternoon at the Florida Legislature, speaking first in front of the state Senate PreK-12 committee and then in front of the House K-20 Competitiveness Subcommittee. Much of her testimony was spent addressing Florida's Senate Bill 736, which is the Sunshine State's latest effort to revamp teacher contracts and evaluations, but, in keeping with her agenda for StudentsFirst, she had the following to say about school choice and parental empowerment:

[Florida's] current charter school laws and tax credit scholarship programs address the need for more choices for families, particularly for low income parents. All types of schools that are held accountable for excellent results should be allowed to grow. The competition this creates makes the entire system better as parents vote with their feet to the best schools for their children.

I have been working with some dedicated parents in Marco Island, who have been tireless in their fight to use the charter law to create a better high school option for their children. I hate to say it, but the school district has thrown up many roadblocks, including one to deny a parcel of land the district owns for the charter school’s use. The approval process to open a charter school should be rigorous, but the districts, some of which don't want competition, should not get to hold all the cards. This dynamic must change and districts have to be held accountable for their obligations around charter schools, such that they cannot be the limiting factor in starting great new schools.

That brings me to a provision that I understand will soon be raised in Florida, which currently has a form of the parent trigger law. Under this law, if 51 percent of parents and teachers demand a change to a failing school with their signatures, they can convert the public school to a charter school. But in order to truly empower parents, they need the right to demand a new school on their own, even if their administration and teachers are resistant to change. I believe Florida’s children would benefit if the House worked to change the language in the law -- from "parents and teachers" to "parents or teachers."

I agree with those who say we need more parent engagement in schools, but I do not believe we get to criticize parents when they then band together just because we don’t like the specific way they choose to engage. We cannot force parents into a prescribed list of preferences for the nature of their engagement, and if we are truly going to empower parents, we cannot force any parent to keep a child in a failing school.