WON'T BACK DOWN

Government bureaucrats and government unions are the problem. They are incompetent, self-serving and they are bankrupting our States. They don’t care about our kids.

Charter-school case underscores divide

Gloria Romero grew up in Barstow, Calif., the daughter of a railroad worker, and like many of the desert community’s young, left for the big city — in her case Los Angeles, where she earned advanced degrees and became a college professor and later a Democratic state legislator.

By happenstance, however, Romero’s most important legislation — empowering parents to take control of failing public schools — is making its first impact in Adelanto, just a few miles from Barstow.

This week, a San Bernardino County judge ordered Adelanto’s school board to stop stalling and grant the charter-school petition of parents in the Desert Trails Elementary School.

The decision’s timing was exquisitely ironic.

It came as a movie inspired by the Adelanto case and another in Compton, “Won’t Back Down,” was running in theaters — portraying the low-income parents in heroic terms and their foes in the educational establishment, including unions, as villains. And it came during the fiercely fought campaign over Proposition 32, which would curb political fundraising by unions, with Romero as a high-profile advocate.

The Adelanto case and Romero’s role underscore one very intriguing political development: a divide between the education establishment, including the powerful California Teachers Association, and some Democratic political figures, such as Romero, who see poor schools as a civil rights issue.

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