Mikelah Wynn, 11, looked skeptically at the tall man in the suit who sat down with her and her friends as she opened up her breakfast Thursday morning. The man was Kevin Concannon, USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, who came from Washington, D.C., to her fifth-grade class in Winnetka to celebrate the...

LA Unified expects this to be its best budget year in a decade, school officials said Tuesday, but board members urged immediate action to address a deficit in three years that could reach half a billion dollars. “This is the healthiest year in the past decade,” Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said in a report to...

The LA Unified school board is scheduled to hold an open session meeting today at 1 p.m. Items up for discussion include consideration of major upgrades at school sites throughout the district. Other potential board actions include staff recommendations for the denial of the charter petition for WISH Academy High School and the renewal of the charter for...

George McKenna doesn’t talk about it much, but Denzel Washington played him in a TV movie called “The George McKenna Story.” Fellow LA Unified school board members may occasionally rib him about it, and on a recent tour of an elementary school, Superintendent Michelle King pointed it out to impress the students. “This man had...

School overcrowding is down and buildings are safer and updated. But according to a recent report, there’s still $60 billion worth of work needed on LA Unified schools. Since 1997 an unprecedented series of bonds approved specifically for school buildings to ease overcrowding has provided the district with $19.5 billion. While the district has completed 20,000 modernization...

Although LA Unified stands to potentially have its highest graduation rate ever this year, the district doesn’t want students to settle for D grades. In fact, the percentage of students maintaining a C or better in college prep or A-G classes has more than doubled in 10 years, according to the latest LA Unified statistics. In a...

LA Unified has returned the last of the military-style weapons it received under a controversial federal program. The news was released in a letter Tuesday, which stated that as of Feb. 5 the last of the weapons, demilitarized rifles, were back in federal custody. The letter from LA Unified Police Chief Steven Zipperman was addressed to Eric Mann,...

The 2017 LA Unified school board elections are still more than a year away, but that isn’t stopping Nick Melvoin from officially throwing his hat into the ring of the District 4 race. The District 4 seat is currently held by board President Steve Zimmer, who has yet to officially declare he will be running...

The second largest school district in the nation went on record last week saying it won’t allow law enforcement agents looking to deport those without documentation into any of its 1,274 schools without a review process. The LA Unified School Board voted unanimously to make the district a “safe zone.” The district is not the first. Across the nation...

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King issued a statement commending Thursday’s announcement that the Porter Ranch well that has been leaking methane gas since October has been sealed, but there was no clear indication of when the two relocated schools and their 1,850 students would return home. Two schools were moved to temporary locations over the winter break...