Mónica García started this month’s school board meeting day with an 8 a.m. visit to one of her schools. At 9 she joined the board’s closed session meeting, eating her lunch while it extended right up to the public afternoon meeting. Between votes, she could be found talking to concerned parents in the hallway outside...

Philip Skarin walked a mile and a half to his little school in the Cahuenga Pass in 1930 from Mulholland Drive when it was just a dirt road. There were 16 students in his class at the school that was called Hollywood Park Elementary and opened in 1917. “I came to school barefoot because we...

LA Unified is retaining a record-high 98 percent of its new teachers, according to a report presented Tuesday. But as administrative positions are cut, some are concerned that the district’s support staff for those new teachers will be spread too thin. “You are doing an amazing job with what you have,” school board member Richard Vladovic...

A statewide public school rating system is available today, but some find it difficult to understand. Rather than having a simple one-number score, the new California School Dashboard Report uses a series of colors to rate various aspects of each school. Some community groups say that makes it hard for parents to compare schools. Former school board member...

California’s new school accountability report, or Dashboard, was launched Wednesday morning by the state Board of Education, and it’s supposed to more accurately represent the success and progress of California public schools. But it’s in beta-test mode right now, according to the state officials launching the Dashboard. For now, it’s only available in English and Spanish, with...

Giving her final fiscal report at LA Unified, Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly offered some good news about the budget for the nation’s second-largest school district. The district will be in the black at the end of this school year and next year, she reported to the school board Tuesday, and while a deficit is...

Local school boards can be prone to blaming their woes on decisions coming out of Sacramento or saying their hands are tied by the California Board of Education. But the state no longer pulls the strings and local districts wield significant power, a California education advocate says. “The days of micromanaging are gone,” said Bill...

The second-largest school district in the country is looking at its unused real estate, closed schools and empty spaces as a potential way to offset an upcoming budget deficit. It seems like an easy solution, but LA Unified officials caution it’s not that simple. “If you are going to look at these assets to sell...

To keep teachers from being poached across state lines and offset a serious teacher shortage, California lawmakers are looking at a first-ever proposal to exempt educators from state taxes for the next decade. While some states have no income tax, the bill would make California the only state in the nation to allow teachers who...

* UPDATE Alexandra Mangia joined about three dozen other parents from Los Angeles to ride a bus overnight to speak in Sacramento about the state’s new way to rate schools. In her one-minute speech Wednesday before the state Board of Education, she talked about how shocked she was to discover how low the test scores...