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Parents could fire teachers or ask a charter school company to take over their child’s school under legislation moving in Tallahassee. The Parent Empowerment Act would allow the changes if 51 percent of parents signed a petition and the state board of education approves. As Whitney Ray tells us, it would also allow parents to pull their kids out of a classroom if the teacher isn’t performing well.

To hold public schools accountable this group of lawmakers and education advocates wants parents to have more power.

“They really don’t think their involvement counts that much,” said former state senator Al Lawson.

The Parent Empowerment Act would allow parents to craft their own reform plan if their child’s school is failing. With enough signatures, parents could fire teachers and administrators or turn the school over to a charter company.

They could also pull their child from a classroom if the teacher has received low performance reviews and put them in a virtual classroom with a better teacher.

Senate Sponsor Lizbeth Benacquisto says the reforms would force schools to improve their product.

“The full intent of the bill is to get parents engaged and involved in the turn around process,” said Benacquisto.

Education groups around the state like the Florida PTA and Fund Education now say the goal isn’t to empower parents… it’s to shut down public schools.

Representative Marty Kiar hopes that’s not true, but says he can see how a charter school organization could use parent involvement to its advantage.

“I could definitely see some of these for-profit institutions run a campaign, do mail outs, do phone banking and basically run the campaign to get the signatures,” said Kiar.

Kiar voted no to the bill in Committee Tuesday, but says with a few tweaks he could change his mind. Many Democrats already support the bill. 51 percent of parents would have to sign off on the reform plan. It would then be submitted to the state board of education along with a reform plan from the school district. Then it would be up to the board to pick the which plan to implement.