One year ago today, the second-largest school district in the country made a decision to shut down all its schools. At 6:25 a.m. the call went out after LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer received an email that threatened students and staff with weapons and bombs. The district was between superintendents. Ramon Cortines had actually...

It’s back to square one. After voting in the fall to start school closer to Labor Day against the superintendent’s recommendation, enough school board members changed their minds Tuesday night and reverted the calendar to this year’s schedule, citing the need to fight decreasing enrollment and the competition from charter schools. That means starting the school year again...

LA Unified officials say the district has bent over backward to give schools as much local control as possible over discretionary positions and funds. But has it backfired? Are schools filthier, counselors scarce and financial bookkeeping in disarray because principals can juggle staff resources and choose which positions to fill? That’s what school board members are now...

*UPDATED School board members gave a tentative but tepid thumbs up to a strategic plan for the LA Unified School District after more than four hours of discussion Tuesday, but they also called for more urgency. The biggest change since an August draft of the 2016-2019 Strategic Plan was a simplified singular goal: 100 percent graduation....

While students in Los Angeles face growing anxiety over the Donald Trump presidency, there’s increasing pressure to end the school district’s random searches that go on every day at middle and high schools. Momentum is greater than ever to end the mandatory practice at LA Unified after the election of an administration that threatens to deport undocumented students, punish sanctuary...

LA Unified success stories from a raft of school models were on display Tuesday, and the unifying theme was how school leaders had to get around district bureaucracy in order to succeed. Principals from affiliated charters, magnets, pilots and choice schools touted their successes at the Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee. All of them...

Disruptive Person Letters that can be used to keep certain people from school campuses are still being angrily criticized by some parents, despite LA Unified’s attempt at softening some of the language and adding appeals procedures. A committee reviewing the policy on Tuesday spent nearly three hours discussing the issue with more than a dozen people...

The principal at Hollywood High School has taken to heart the superintendent’s call to think creatively of ways to raise money for her school. The LA Unified School District doesn’t provide her the Advanced Placement textbooks she needs to get her students ready for college, and she wants to install state-of-the-art equipment at the school’s New Media...

Never uttering the word “Trump,” the LA Unified school board held a day’s worth of board meetings Tuesday that delicately reflected the anxieties of their constituents and a general upheaval of emotions in the education system over the past week since the election results. Then, they doubled-down by unanimously passing a resolution declaring that they would...

Nine out of nine charter schools were approved for renewals and revisions Tuesday night. But school board members took all of them to task for some of their test scores and other benchmarks that fell below LA Unified district norms. School board member Richard Vladovic rattled off low scores or graduation rates, or high suspension...