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“Once we parents got united,” said Gloria Aroche, 24, a mother from El Salvador, who wears snap-button cowboy shirts and floor-length skirts with ruffles, “we lost our fear and felt the power. Felt it. Like a warm thing inside you.”

LA Weekly this week has the remarkable story of how parents with help from a Special Forces hero used the state parent trigger law to remove a principal and return Weigand Avenue Elementary School to an inspiring place of learning.

“In the end,” the story says, “these parents won. Just before school opened this week, (LA Unified Superintendent John) Deasy praised the parents, saying, ‘Having met them, these mostly mothers, what struck me was the courage it takes to raise your voice and demand that things be better — rather than just kind of tolerating what was there.’ “