Join the Revolution to Transform Your School - Flash Version
From this day forward, the parents of Los Angeles will set the agenda and this is it: Every decision will be about kids. Our kids. Not as a slogan. Not as a tool. Not as a backdrop for a press conference. But for real. Every decision must be filtered through the lens of whether we'd make that same decision if it affected our own child. This isn't a political calculation or a fleeting, idealistic notion. It's a new day for parents in Los Angeles. It's a revolution.
It's a revolution because it's such a radical departure from the status quo. Right now, we're told to leave our child's education and our child's future to the "experts" -- the same experts who preside over a status quo where half our kids don't graduate and 90% of our kids don't go to college.
These so-called experts want us to believe that this is the best we can do. That calling for more parent choice, more accountability, and a lot less bureaucracy is a naive and even crazy agenda. The bureaucrats and the special interests want us to believe that up is down and down is up. These defenders of the status quo who live in an Alice-in-Wonderland un-reality are the real crazy people. Their strategy is to force us to buy into their un-reality, to drag us down that rabbit hole with them -- so that we will jettison basic notions of common sense and social justice from our politics. They want us to think twice before we call for a revolution.
We're told that if we want to get involved, have a bake sale. But it's time for the bureaucrats to do the baking for a change. We are going to take back our schools from the special interests and the bureaucrats by making one simple bargain with every parent in Los Angeles: if you are not satisfied with your child's education, organize half the parents at your school to be a part of the Parent Revolution, and the Parents Union -- working with Green Dot Public Schools and other high quality charter school operators -- will guarantee you a great school for your child. The same kind of school I'd send my own daughter Fiona to.
So if you're sick of great teachers getting pink slips, if you're sick of bureaucrats getting bumped into the classroom, if you're sick of backroom deals with grown-ups, about grown-ups and for grown-ups, them sign up for the Parent Revolution.
Together, we will seize this moment, drag the LAUSD kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, and make our public schools work once again for the parents and kids of Los Angeles.
