The LA Unified Board of Education’s first open meeting of the new year was scheduled to convene at 1 p.m. with a variety of items on the agenda. Earlier, the board met in closed session. For that agenda, click here. For the 1 p.m. board agenda, click here, and for board materials, here. Click here for LIVESTREAM COVERAGE

With Gov. Jerry Brown‘s new budget offering little in the way of funding for new school construction projects, a group has announced a plan to gather signatures for placing a $9 billion school construction bond on the November 2016 ballot. The Coalition for Adequate School Housing (C.A.S.H.), an alliance of school districts and construction groups...

A report from the U.S. Education Department on the district’s troubled $1.3 billion iPad program and gitchy MiSiS computer system had few positive things to say, as it found problems in both efforts with their planning, execution and metrics for success. The report, which was requested by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, found that the...

Former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy will be working as a consultant for The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems as a “superintendent-in-residence.” The center is a leadership academy for school administrators, which is funded by Eli Broad, a longtime Deasy supporter and powerful financier of California education reform efforts. Deasy resigned in October under...

LA Unified board member Steve Zimmer is asking the board to weigh in on a legal battle between a major fruit company and the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. Gerawan Farming, one of the country’s largest suppliers of peaches, plums and other fruit, has had contracts with LA Unified and is under consideration for future...

The majority of public school teachers who participated in a new survey support changes in state teacher job protection laws that were the focus of last year’s landmark ruling in Vergara v. California. The findings were somewhat of a surprise in that the poll, conducted by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research for Teach Plus, a national nonprofit that...

* UPDATED Gov. Jerry Brown‘s proposed state budget for 2015-2016, released today, includes $52 million more in K-12 funding than last year’s budget. The increase, which would bring the state’s K-12 education spending to $47.12 billion, a one-tenth of 1 percent increase over last year, includes more money for Common Core implementation, Internet infrastructure, special education, emergency...

California continued to rank poorly in an annual report that grades how states are educating their students, scoring a total score of D+ and an overall ranking of 42nd in the Education Week’s “Quality Counts” report. Education Week is published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, and its annual report is often cited and...

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) asked students, parents, teachers, leaders and supporters last year to share videos about their charter schools as part of a contest for thousands of dollars in cash prizes. With the deadline now passed, the CCSA has received 47 submissions and is asking the public to view the videos and...

A new state senate bill would ban the installation of any new school athletic fields or playgrounds that contain “crumb rubber” synthetic material until a full study is done on the substance. After lead was discovered at some LA Unified preschool playgrounds, the district stopped building new crumb rubber fields in 2009 and removed the...