With the the LA Unified school board special election only four days away, Alex Johnson is the only candidate of seven whose campaign is supported by independent expenditure committees, also known as super-PACS. So far, groups are spending more than $52,000 to get him elected, according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. These groups...

* UPDATED As lawyers figure out where Citizens of the World Mar Vista decides will call home in the 2014-2015 school year, LA Unified board member Steve Zimmer says the charter is likely to encounter the same friction it endured as a co-located school this year at Stoner Elementary if it remains on LA’s west...

Citizens of the World Mar Vista (CWC) wants to remain a citizen at Stoner Avenue Elementary School in Del Rey next year despite months of bitter fighting between parents of students at the two schools. In a letter sent to LA Unified officials today, CWC denies it missed the district’s deadline to respond to the...

The racial tensions at Markham Middle School in Watts have now reached the United States Congress. In a letter to Superintendent John Deasy sent late last week, Congresswoman Janice Hahn writes she was alerted of the conflict between the school administration and parents who feel “that African American students are treated unfairly by being sent...

While officials of Citizens of the World Mar Vista said last week they were blindsided to learn they would not be returning to their shared campus at Stoner Avenue Elementary, LA Unified said today CWC was notified nearly a month earlier that it could remain at the site if the school wanted to stay. It...

Six years ago the LA Unified School Board approved a program to build affordable “workforce housing” for teachers to live closer to schools where they work. But now, with one project nearing completion and two others in the planning stages, the district concedes that it has absolutely no control over who gets to live there,...

It now appears that just the specter of a “Parent Trigger” action is enough for parents to get what they want. Lerina Cordero, mother of a first grade boy at West Athens Elementary in south Los Angeles, says parents there had been trying for years to get the school’s leadership to stop rampant bullying and...

What is normally a routine, no-questions-asked formality for the LA Unified School Board hit a snag today. Board Member Tamar Galatzan opposed the reappointment of Stuart Magruder, an outspoken critic of the use of bond money for iPads, from the School Construction Bond Oversight Committee (BOC). The board effectively blocked Magruder’s reappointment by removing him...

The problem for girls is boys. Several years ago Elizabeth Hicks, a counseling coordinator for LA Unified, had an idea, to open the first all-girls traditional public school in California in more than a decade. It would be a rigorous STEM academy, requiring girls to take science, math and computer classes from sixth grade through...