LA Unified school board Vice President Steve Zimmer was honored recently by the Los Angeles Food Policy Council for his efforts in getting the district to take a more progressive approach to food purchasing.  The council developed the Good Food Purchasing Program, which LA Unified adopted in 2012 and strengthened in late 2014 with two “Good Food” resolutions that Zimmer...

Aspire Public Schools, which operates 10 independent charter schools in LA Unified, today named Carolyn Hack as its new CEO. Hack, who is chief financial and operating officer for Uncommon Schools in New York, will replace outgoing CEO James Willcox, who is stepping down in September. “We are delighted that Carolyn Hack will be the next leader of Aspire,” Aspire...

With the national mood trending toward schools solving more and more of their students’ social problems, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute takes a look at the issues that schools alone cannot solve but depress student performance. What kind of services public school districts should provide and the problems they should solve seems...

We openly speculated here at LA School Report less than a month ago that Steve Zimmer appeared in position to be elected the next LA Unified school board president in July. Not so fast, Kemosabe. Board President Richard Vladovic’s tenure is set to expire in July due to a two-year term limit, but that may no longer...

As part of a broader effort to fight declining enrollment due to students leaving in droves for charter schools, the LA Unified board voted this week to reconfigure its communications department to also include a marketing arm that will produce brochures and short videos highlighting the achievements and attributes of its schools. The idea behind the...

The LA Unified school board unanimously approved $79.6 million in bond funding on Tuesday to help fix the problematic and glitchy student data computer system known as MiSiS, but it also agreed to do some soul searching as a result of the expenditure. The request for the funds from the district came with a unanimous...

Schools that took part in the national City Year program are more likely to see jumps in their students’ standardized math and English scores, according to a new report. The program, which last year had 150 schools in 22 cities participate, was active in 25 LA Unified schools. (Check out the attached video from September,...

Amid a suddenly contentious environment, the Ethnic Studies Advisory Board met last week with a lot of new questions in front of it and the LA Unified school board was set to discuss the issue today. When the LA Unified school board voted in the fall to make ethnic studies a requirement for high school...