Tomorrow’s LA Unified School Board meeting is shaping up to be loud and crowded as the seven members take the final step in approving a new contract with the teachers union and consider several plans to fix impending drop in graduation rates. After years of working under an expired contract, UTLA members last week overwhelmingly...

* UPDATED UTLA  members overwhelmingly approved a tentative contract with LA Unified that will lead to 10.4 percent raise for teachers over two years. The school board is expected to rubber stamp the new deal at its next board meeting, on Tuesday. Eighty three percent of union members — 25,300 people — participated in the...

A state audit of Magnolia Public Schools, a charter network operating in LA Unified, has found that the group’s financial controls need improvement but that the district acted too hastily in its attempts to close three of the chain’s eight campuses. The report, issued today, brings to a close a long running episode involving Magnolia’s parent...

As LA Unified awaits millions more dollars from Governor Jerry Brown‘s revised budget, district officials are beginning to cobble together a spending plan for the next academic year. It’s a task that involves reinvesting in programs that were gutted in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But as advocates for many worthy causes are calling...

LA Unified school board members will be busy this week in a series of committee meetings as a prelude to the board’s monthly meeting next week. The Successful School Climate Committee, chaired by Monica Garcia, will be gathering tomorrow to discuss the implementation of the Student Bill of Rights. The district passed the new set...

LA Unified is on the brink of cutting a highly-successful preschool program for some of the district’s poorest children at the same time that members of the California state assembly are trying to expand early education programs for all low-income pre-Kindergarten students. The district’s School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP) is just one of a...

After a year of disastrous technical issues and internet connectivity problems, LA Unified students are on track to complete the new computerized state mandated tests called Smarter Balanced, according to district officials. Cynthia Lim, executive director of the office of Data and Accountability, told LA School Report today that more than 50 percent of students have...

While teachers have been celebrating a new contract deal that will lead to a 10.4 percent salary increase over two years, most LA Unified athletic coaches are still waiting for their first raise since 1999. District officials at a Curriculum and Instruction Committee meeting yesterday estimated that 58 percent of school team coaches — the...

LA Unified graduation rates are up for the fourth straight year according to new data released today by the California Department of Education, but they still fall far short of statewide rates. The percentage of local students in the Class of 2014, who earned a diploma in four years reached 70.4 percent, up two percent over...

* UPDATED One week after a landmark deal that will bring LA Unified teachers a double digit salary increase, more than a hundred members of the teachers union, UTLA, protested potential district layoffs this morning before the start of hearings to challenge the cuts. The school board last month authorized 609 layoff notices that were issued to...