By Ashleigh Costello
EAGnews.org

ADELANTO, Calif. — A California Superior Court judge ruled on Friday the Adelanto Elementary School District must immediately comply with a previous court order allowing a parents group to convert the failing Desert Trails Elementary School into a charter school.

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Judge John Vander Feer’s landmark decision is a big win for the Desert Trails Parent Union and sets an important precedent for future parent trigger petitions.

Doreen Diaz, lead organizer of the Desert Trails Parent Union, expressed her gratitude at a press conference Monday.

“We are ecstatic to have come this far,” said Diaz.  “It’s been a journey for all of us, through good times and bad, to get to this point and we now know that our children will get the quality education that they deserve.”

The case has generated a lot of interest across the country as the nation’s first successful parent trigger petition.

California’s “parent trigger” law gives parents of at least 50 percent of students in any public school the power to force changes in staffing and/or operations, provided the school has been academically failing for three straight years.

Five other states have similar laws (Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas) and as many as 20 others are considering adoption of the parent trigger model.

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The Desert Trails Elementary School has been deemed failing for the last six years. The majority of the school’s sixth-grade students fail to read, write, or perform math at grade level.

The struggle at Desert Trails was the inspiration behind the fictional movie, “Won’t Back Down,” which features Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as frustrated parents who fight to use a “parent trigger” petition to transform a failing school into a charter school.

Labor activists around the nation have criticized the movie, calling its portrayal of teacher unions inaccurate.

But the fact is that members of the teacher union in the Adelanto school district worked hard to stand in the way of the parent trigger effort, going as far as knocking on doors to convince parents to remove their names from the petition. Some have accused union activists of trying to intimidate some parents who signed the petitions by questioning their immigration status.

But in the end the parents triumphed. Just like in the movie.

A long, uphill battle

Judge Vander Feer’s ruling is the latest triumph in a series of uphill battles for the Desert Trails Parents Union.

The Adelanto school board twice rejected completed petitions from the parents group, forcing them to take their case to court.

They won the first legal battle in July when San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Steve Malone ordered the district to allow the parents to begin the process of transforming Desert Trails into an independent charter school.

The parents group was back in court Friday because the Adelanto school board voted 3-1 to blatantly defy the court order.

The board concluded that there was insufficient time to implement a charter for the 2012 school year.  Instead, the board ruled they would reform the school by forming a community advisory council comprised of teachers, administrators, parents, and community members.

But that’s not what the parent trigger law stipulates. The school board is not allowed to ignore the law and pursue its own alternative strategy.

“This decision turns the page to a new chapter, a new day, and a new paradigm, where a mother’s and a father’s love for their child has as much political power as a high priced lobbyist or maxed out campaign contribution,” said Ben Austin, executive director of the Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that designed the parent trigger law.

“These parents faced opposition, the likes of which we don’t see in the presidential race. They have been bullied, they have been lied to, and they have had their immigration status used against them in some cases.

“We caught the other side literally forging documents in order to defend an indefensible status quo.  The school board has voted them down twice, and not at one moment did these parents give up, did these parents lose hope.”

The school board’s lack of cooperation has drawn even more criticism in recent weeks as Desert Trails’ score on the Academic Performance Index (API) fell 13 points in the last year.

“These kids are in a failed school and what the district did not tell the judge on Friday is that just last week, the numbers came out for the school for last year and despite all the false promises, this failed school for six years, got worse last year,” said Mark Holscher, attorney for the Desert Trails Parent Union.

The school’s API score fell from 712 last year to an unforgivable 699 this year.  The Academic Performance Index is based on a 1,000-point scale.

Many parents were on hand at the press conference to express their gratitude.

“I’m so thankful for the knock on the door that one day saying, ‘You know, there’s things that can happen that are good for our children at Desert Trails and there’s other parents feeling like I was feeling, overwhelmed and frustrated, ‘“said Kathy Duncan.

Parents who signed the trigger petition will vote Oct. 18 to choose one of the two charter operators who submitted bids to take over Desert Trails in the fall of 2013.