As parents, when we send our children to school each morning, we trust that the adults in charge are making decisions that put students first.

Newly revealed documents suggest that trust may have been misplaced.

According to The California Post, LAUSD’s own financial experts warned district leaders that bowing to union demands and approving substantial employee pay raises would put the district on an unsustainable financial path.

The board ignored those warnings, and the raises were approved anyway. Now the district faces the very fiscal challenges its own experts predicted.

LAUSD’s own financial experts warned district leaders that bowing to union demands and approving substantial employee pay raises would put the district on an unsustainable financial path. Jonathan Alcorn For CA Post

This isn’t just a budget story. It’s a leadership story.

Every dollar a school district spends should advance one mission: giving children the best education possible. When leadership ignores its own experts, students are ultimately the ones who pay the price through program cuts, larger class sizes, financial instability and fewer opportunities.

Meanwhile, the academic results speak for themselves. Fewer than half of LAUSD students meet California’s English Language Arts proficiency standards, and too many children continue to leave our schools without the skills they need to succeed.

Parents are constantly asked for more patience, more trust and more funding. What we are receiving in return is far too little accountability.

As parents, we are not spectators. We are stakeholders in our children’s futures.

The board ignored warnings, and raises were approved anyway. AFP via Getty Images

Our tax dollars fund these schools. Our children sit in these classrooms. Our families bear the consequences when failed policies go unchallenged. That gives us not only the right, but the responsibility, to demand transparency, measurable results and leadership that puts students ahead of politics.

Holding school districts, administrators and teachers unions accountable should never be considered anti-teacher. The overwhelming majority of teachers work hard every day under difficult circumstances. Accountability simply means ensuring that every decision is evaluated by one standard: Does it improve outcomes for students?

Our children deserve 100% of the education they have been promised.

For too long, California’s political leadership has asked parents to accept disappointing results as the new normal. Working families continue to struggle while academic performance stagnates, financial warnings are ignored and those responsible rarely face consequences. Elections come and go, yet many voters continue to reward the same leadership that has overseen these outcomes.

If we want different results, we have to be willing to make different choices.

That is why the upcoming elections matter.

California has an opportunity to embrace leaders who are willing to challenge the status quo rather than protect it. State superintendent of school candidate Sonja Shaw has built her campaign around restoring accountability in public education, empowering parents, and ensuring that students, not politics or special interests, come first. Likewise, gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is offering voters a different vision for California built around government accountability, educational improvement and support for working families.

I have no affiliation with either campaign; I just recognize the need for change.

Whether every voter agrees with every policy they propose is beside the point. What matters is that California desperately needs leaders who are willing to ask difficult questions, challenge failing systems and measure success by student achievement rather than political talking points.

Imagine what a leadership team committed to accountability, transparency and putting families first could accomplish. This election represents an opportunity to begin pulling California and school districts like LAUSD out of the dark ages of declining academic performance, fiscal irresponsibility and failed leadership.

Parents have more power than they often realize. We are more than voters. We are the people with the greatest stake in California’s future, because we are raising it.

Our children deserve schools that prepare them for success, not systems that settle for mediocrity. They deserve leaders who listen to experts instead of ignoring them. They deserve transparency instead of excuses.

Most of all, they deserve parents who are willing to demand better.

Shirin Yadegar is the founder of www.lamommagazine.com and a political commentator.