One of today’s editorials in the OC Register praises the Palm Lane Elementary parents who organized to petition for the conversion of their kids’ school to charter status under the Parent Trigger Law:

And so, when violence is done to our educations, something that removes from us the liberty to receive it or presents it to us in poor condition, human beings are well within their right to seek change.

Today, the parents of Palm Lane Elementary in Anaheim will do just that.

According to Register reports, the signatures of more than 60 percent of Palm Lane’s parents have been collected – more than enough to make use of what is known as the “parent trigger” law – and will be submitted to the school district for review. The law allows parents to push for essential reform of their children’s schools.

Among the options: Replacing a principal, forcing the school to rehire for teaching and staff positions or even closing the school. What the parents of Palm Lane have chosen is the “Restart Model,” which will transition the elementary into a charter school.

Palm Lane has shown itself in much need of reform: It has, for 12 years, been classified as a “Program Improvement” school – bureaucratic code for “failing” – a designation that requires two years of data analysis to receive. Twelve plus two is 14; Palm Lane has not been sufficient since the dawn of the 21st Century.

You can read the rest of the editorial here.

Kids can’t be freezed-dried until the public schools they attend are able to provide the quality of education those kids (and their parents) are entitled to (whatever the cause(s) of a school’s deficiencies). Parents have to act while their children are still children. That’s what these parents are doing, and they deserve better than the derision and contempt they have been receiving from the district and teachers union activists.