East LA native Monica Garcia only planned on working for LA Unified for three weeks.  That was way back in 2001, when former Board member Jose Huizar asked her to be his first chief of staff. But Garcia, now 44, ended up replacing her boss when he was elected to City Council. The job of...

Former School Board candidate John Fernandez is among a handful of voices urging to teachers to vote against the tentative agreement struck between UTLA and LAUSD regarding teacher evaluations earlier this year. “The big problem is the district and the union have not figured out how much weight they will count for,” said Fernandez, who...

Jeneen Robinson, the would-be school board candidate for the Westside’s District 4, is meeting with the elections division tomorrow to contest her non-qualification for the March ballot, according to her campaign manager, Kevin Durst. “It’s kind of odd,” Durst told LA School Report. “We turned in 1000 names and only 360 were valid, according to the electoral office. We’re...

The Coalition for School Reform has a Board. It has a website, albeit one left over from 2011.  It has a campaign consultant team.  Now all it needs are candidates. Although the Coalition won’t formally announce its slate of candidates until January, its picks are widely expected to include school board President Monica Garcia in...

The March 5 elections are less than three months away, and campaigns and advocates are busy hiring campaign consultants. The San Francisco-based SCN Strategies political consulting firm has confirmed that they will manage the independent expenditure (IE) campaign for the Coalition for School Reform. Meantime, three individual candidates — both union-endorsed and otherwise — have hired SG&A Campaigns to...

The media tends to pay a lot of attention to UTLA, the powerful local union that represents classroom teachers. LA School Report is no different. But there’s another union that arguably just as influential when it comes to LAUSD issues: SEIU Local 99, which represents non-certificated school employees (also called classified employees) such as teacher assistants, bus...

It’s still very early goings in the school board race, but Antonio Sanchez is already emerging as the favorite in the East Valley’s District 6 — especially since Ernie Cardenas dropped out earlier this week (see: Cardenas Explains Withdrawal – Sort Of). The 30-year-old Sanchez aims to bridge the bitter divide between unions and school choice...

Roughly 300 LAUSD employees – mostly teachers – suspected of misconduct are housed in “rubber rooms,” as you may recall from last week’s LA Weekly article documenting the process and the costs of the lengthy review and dismissal process (127 days, on average). But how many employees ever find their way back to their old jobs? As it turns out,...

A controversial proposal written by Richard Vladovic to give the school board the authority to approve most grants over $1 million was approved 4-3 by the board today, following tense discussion and over the strenuous objections of Superintendent John Deasy. Board member Vladovic argued that it is the school board’s job to set policy, and...

In what is likely to be a series of campaign shakeups over the next few weeks, two candidates have withdrawn from the LAUSD school board race, both in District 6, which covers the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley: First, candidate Brian Muller decided to withdraw shortly after he declared his intention to run....