Angelica Lopez Moyes is amazed that her 1st-grade son can speak Mandarin. But she is concerned that his dual-language immersion program at Castelar Street Elementary School could  be jeopardized if a charter is co-located on the campus. Castelar, founded in 1882 and the second-oldest school in Los Angeles, has 570 students and is at about 75 percent...

On Friday, 19 students from seven LA Unified schools will participate in a cook-off that will send a team to compete nationally in Washington, D.C. Their task: to create a nutritionally balanced school meal for $1.14, the district’s lunch budget. Their challenge is not unlike one the massive LA Unified Food Services division is facing: how to feed more than...

Summer school is expanding, plus it’s going to be fun again. That’s the message Janet Kiddoo, LA Unified’s intervention administrator for Beyond the Bell, brought Tuesday in a report to the Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee. “Whoever thought people would get excited about summer school?” Kiddoo said. “People are very excited, and there are such passionate and...

On Friday morning, more than 100 parents were lined up outside Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City waiting for a permit to get their child into one of the district’s Schools for Advanced Studies. One dad spent the night on the school steps. No, it’s no April Fool’s joke. Getting into one of LA...

About 1,900 LAUSD students who failed test now could get their diplomas LA Unified will begin mailing out diplomas soon to hundreds of former students who’d already completed an online application to determine their eligibility. As many as 1,900 former district students may get their diplomas. By Fermin Leal, EdSource A diverse teaching force? This search...

How can the funding more than double per student, yet LA Unified still be facing a financial crisis? Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly posed that question as she explained the intricacies of the budget and laid out new numbers at Tuesday’s special board meeting. For example, she pointed out that by the end of the recession in 2009,...

*UPDATE With LA Unified heading toward financial crisis within three years, Superintendent Michelle King on Tuesday kicked off a series of special board meetings to detail her plans for fiscal solvency. Topping that list is keeping kids in the district. Notably absent was cutting staff. King’s initiatives would initially cost the district — roughly $20 million. But the...

George McKenna is going into his 55th year as an educator, and he has a lot to say about it. In fact, he declares: “Give me a school that’s supposedly poor-performing for three years and I guarantee you no charter school would be able to snatch any kids from that school, and no kids will...

George McKenna is often considered one of the more curmudgeonly characters on the LA Unified school board (although he has some competition). As vice president of the board and the senior member of the seven elected members, McKenna is given a lot of leeway and respect when he has something to say at the board...

The 46 new classrooms installed when two schools were temporarily relocated because of the Porter Ranch gas leak will be taken down once the students go back to their former locations. The district spent $5 million in building the temporary classrooms that are equipped with heat and air conditioning and required plumbing, wiring, utility poles, paving...