California implemented the parent trigger rule in 2010, which means that when more then half of the parents sign a petition, the statue of a school can be changed from public to charter. In 2011 a huge lawcase, the Compton case brings side effects to the public.
At the same time comparable regulations are implemented in other states, Ohio, Connecticut & Texas.
More information can be found on: parentrevolution.org. In a article about this case in NYTimes:

But Compton’s ordeal illustrated how difficult claiming that power can be and how bitter the battles can become. When parents began signing the petition last fall to replace McKinley Elementary School, several Latino parents said teachers had warned them that they could be deported if they did. Other parents said that teachers insisted the children were simply not trying hard enough to learn. Teachers, for their part, complained that parents had been coerced into signing the petition and that many did not know what they were signing.

Compton Unified School District officials challenged the petition in court, which ruled that because the signatures were not dated, the petition was not valid. While organizers appealed that decision in court, the administrators of the charter school, Celerity Sirius, looked for other ways to open a new campus and secured approval for one at a former church and at a campus closed because of low enrollment.

Still, by the time school began this month, only about a third of the parents who initially signed the petition ended up enrolling their children in the charter school. While there are children who come from 40 miles away, only a fraction of the charter students are from Compton.

“Some people just didn’t want to deal with the hassle of having to take their kid somewhere else,” said Marlene Romero, a parent who collected dozens of signatures last fall. “They wanted the change to happen at their own school.”