U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Los Angeles today to shine a light on a White House initiative that takes a holistic approach to helping kids learn. Duncan joined LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy and a group of teachers, students and leaders of the Youth Policy Institute at a community center in Hollywood. The...

For years, the SEIU Local 99 has been “the other union” in LAUSD. Representing custodians, cooks, bus drivers and other “classified” workers, the union is just as politically influential, if not more so, than the teachers union, UTLA. And yet its voice is rarely heard in policy debates. That might be about to change. In...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKVv5wsqNYk Educational efforts in Los Angeles are in the process of expanding beyond the classroom and touching community members of all ages with a wide variety of services not usually offered at typical Los Angeles school sites. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit group Youth Policy Institute (YPI) received a $30 million dollar grant from the federal...

Promise Neighborhoods — “a national initiative to end the cycle of intergenerational poverty” — are coming to Los Angeles, thanks to federal funding and a high-scoring application from a consortium of LA education nonprofits led by Youth Policy Institute. The Promise Neighborhoods idea was popularized by Geoffrey Canada’s New York City effort (called the Harlem Children’s...