Frank Pastore Show Run Sheets: Monday, January 3, 2011

400-408 – Cynthia Martinez, PTA President at McKinley Elementary School in Compton, opposes the implementation of the new Parent Trigger Law at her school – she doesn't want to her school taken over by Parent Revolution and become the fourth Celerity Charter School in Los Angeles. She says the data comparing Celerity's success to McKinley's failure isn't legitimate. She also says the new principal, Flemming Robinson, has been making real improvements the one year he's been there.

PARENT TRIGGER LAW – Authored by outgoing state Senator Gloria Romero, allows parents to take over their children's school and alter it in one of four ways: transform the school into a charter, require the district to hire new teachers, fire the principal or shut down the school completely. State law requires any Parent Trigger charter school to accept all the kids in the school's admission area, including low-performing and special-education students.

AGAINST – California Association of Teachers, California State PTA, Pastor Lee Finnie, Cynthia Martinez, Karla Garcia, Victor Tellez, They say over 100 of the parents want to rescind their signatures on the petition.

FOR – Parent Revolution (aka McKinley Parents for Change) (Directors: Ben Austin, Gabe Rose, Pat DeTemple. Staffers: Mary Najera) gathered signatures from over 60% of the school's parents (261), when they needed only 51% to qualify. They delivered the petition to the Compton USD Superintendent Karen Frison on December 7. Marlene Romero.

COMPTON USD – Less than 50% of students graduate from high school, just 2% go to college. Leaders have stopped all charter schools from entering.

MCKINLEY ELEMENTARY – On the Program Improvement List because they are chronically underperforming, they rank in the bottom 10% of similar schools in California with identical racial and economic backgrounds. It is 40% black, 60% Latino. Blacks score 635 on the API, Latinos score 713. It gets a "1 out of 10" on the API score for comparable schools.

CELERITY CHARTER SCHOOLS (celerityschools.org) – Operate three schools in Los Angeles, two rate "9 out of 10" and the other "10 out of 10" on API scores. One school scores 932, another 814, and the third 776.

•• Simone Wilson, LA Weekly (12/30/2010) Compton's Parent Trigger Feud: PTA opposes charter school. Moms sick of McKinley Elementary fight back.

413-423 – Cynthia Martinez,

428-437 – Cynthia Martinez,

443-452 – • Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools (greendot.org), which has a wonderful track record of transforming large public schools that are failing, into smaller cluster schools with amazing graduation rates. Green Dot operates now operates 17 charter schools, including the much maligned Alain Leroy Locke High School in Watts. As of today, 9 Green Dot schools have had graduating classes with the following cumulative results: 80% of Green Dot ninth graders graduated in four years, 76% of them were admitted to four-year universities, and almost all the rest have gone on to junior college. What's the LAUSD graduation rate? Just 47%. Nationally, the bottom 5% of failing schools account for 50% of all dropouts. If you're ready to improve the education of your child, join the parent revolution to transform your school by signing up at parentrevolution.org.