Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, high-tech trend setters for national life, are showing their political clout in California by forcing legislators to follow their lead on hot-button issues of school reform.

The California legislature overwhelmingly passed a measure Thursday that would increase the number of charter schools in the state to 250 next year and allow 100 new schools every year thereafter.

Gov. Pete Wilson said he would sign the bill, authored by Redwood City Democrat Ted Lempert, which permits parents as well as teachers to sign petitions authorizing charter schools.

The California legislature, which delayed votes on other charter bill, took its action in the face of a ballot initiative authored by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reed Hastings and backed by a coalition of high-tech companies concerned that the state’s public schools were not providing them with capable employees.

Charter schools are deregulated schools within the public system now authorized in 31 states and the District of Columbia. California previously capped their number at 100.

The Hastings measure would have eliminated the cap entirely and provided for alternate sponsorship, putting the burden of proof on school boards to show why charters shouldn’t be granted.

“Over 100 schools are enough to show that charter schools benefit children,” said Don Shalvey, superintendent of the San Carlos school district south of San Francisco and a backer of the initiative.

The initiative had gathered enough support to qualify for the November ballot. But after Thursday’s passage of the charter school bill, Mr. Hastings said he would take the 1.2 million signatures and burn them in a bonfire on the beach at Santa Monica.

The California Teachers Association, state affiliate of the 2.2-million-member National Education Association, changed its position to support the new legislation. The new bill requires that teachers be credentialed but follow-up legislation may allow non-credentialed teachers, a feature of many charter schools.

A continuing study by the University of California at Los Angeles has showed that charter schools have proved popular in minority communities by allowing parents a measure of choice. Other studies have shown that charters feature a high level of parental involvement.

“This makes the quality of the individual child’s education based on how much time the parents can spend with the children. That is discrimination,” said Assemblyman Kevin Murray, Los Angeles Democrat. “The schools are supposed to be the great equalizer.”

In similar style, the California legislature took no action on bilingual education, even though the enabling legislation expired 10 years ago. That was before English for the Children, or Proposition 227, an initiative authored by software entrepreneur Ron Unz. The measure, slated for the Jun 2 primary election, largely eliminates bilingual education for the state’s 1.4 million limited-English-proficiency students.

A Los Angeles Times poll taken in mid-April showed 63 percent of Californians favoring the measure with 23 percent opposed. The Clinton administration has openly opposed Proposition 227, as it did Proposition 187 on immigration reform and Proposition 209, which eliminated race and gender preferences in the state.

Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and the author of From Mainline to Sideline: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches. He can be reached via email at klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.