Labor leaders who work with LA Unified were surprised their regular labor report was not on the agenda at the first board meeting of the new school year. Dropping the “labor partners update” was part of new board President Ref Rodriguez’s “Kid’s First” focus, so he began Tuesday’s meeting with students talking about their schools...

A controversial resolution condemning a legislative proposal to start a STEM school in Los Angeles that would be outside LA Unified’s control failed after a heated debate Tuesday. The first school board meeting of the new year was supposed to display board President Ref Rodriguez’s “Kid’s First” agenda. A new help desk was set up to...

When parents show up at Tuesday’s school board meeting to complain or gripe or advocate for their child, they will be greeted by something new: a “Kids First” Help Desk. As part of his newly passed resolution to put kids first at LA Unified, school board President Ref Rodriguez said that people who used to...

New school board member Kelly Gonez is introducing an ambitious resolution that calls for making detailed data available to the public to ensure students are supported and able to complete college and “access a rewarding career.” With this resolution, called “Creating Pathways to Lifelong Success for Our Students,” Gonez is fulfilling a key campaign promise to...

Officers from the Los Angeles school police and California Highway Patrol are coming to Dorsey High School on Saturday to help students raise money for a trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “In light of the Charlottesville tragedy, this event will shine the light on hope not...

Toward the end of the first day of wrangling 100 boys in LA Unified’s first all-boys school, Principal Don Moorer sighed, “They certainly have a lot of energy.” He took the entire school of sixth- and seventh-graders to USC on Tuesday morning to tour the campus and show them a university they might someday attend....

*UPDATED LA Unified is opening its first all-boys school next week, but so far only half the number of hoped-for students have enrolled. The Boys Academic Leadership Academy is starting with sixth- and seventh-grades, offering 100 spots for each grade. Eventually, the South LA school is approved to go through high school, opening a new grade each...

The school year starts Tuesday for most of the 664,000 LA Unified students, but don’t plan your vacation for late next summer yet, because it’s not clear when school will start next year. The second-largest school district in the nation has flip-flopped a number of times about when school should begin, and there are at...

LA Unified administrators plan to review a controversial plan that requires all middle schools and high schools to perform random searches every day of student lockers and to scan students with metal-detector wands. School board President Ref Rodriguez said Superintendent Michelle King contacted his office on Monday to discuss the issue and review the district’s...

Superintendent Michelle King gave her second “State of the District” speech on Tuesday morning, touting new accomplishments for LA Unified and new programs that got wild applause from the audience of mostly principals. A middle school pilot program trying out later start times, 10 early education dual-immersion language pilots in Korean and Spanish, 28 new transitional-kindergarten...