It was college appreciation day Tuesday at the LA Unified school board, so all the board members wore their school shirts. But they may as well have worn their football jerseys because it erupted into a verbal brawl. In a few seemingly innocuous votes involving committee meetings, two board members not part of the new...

In a vote that fell along the reform and labor lines, Mónica García on Tuesday became the new president of the LA Unified school board. She named Nick Melvoin to the vice president’s position. Melvoin joined the board in July after defeating the former board president in May’s general election. She also confirmed that she...

Mónica García — a staunch education reformer and a favorite of the district’s Latino majority — will likely become LA Unified’s new school board president next Tuesday. She has served as president twice before, for a total of six years, and she is already the longest-serving school board president in district history. The District 2...

Ref Rodriguez announced Tuesday he has resigned from his position as LA Unified school board president after the district attorney charged him last week with three felonies related to an alleged money laundering scheme in his bid for the school board. Rodriguez posted a statement on his Twitter and Facebook pages at the beginning of a...

This Tuesday, the school board will meet in a non-voting session, called the Committee of the Whole. It will be the first meeting of the board since last week’s revelations of felony charges against school board President Ref Rodriguez. That news came just after last Tuesday’s board meeting, the second that Rodriguez presided over as...

For this school board president, the end of DACA is personal. Ref Rodriguez’s dad has only a third-grade education, and his mom left school at sixth grade. They were migrant workers in Mexico who came to the United States to offer their children a better future through education. So Tuesday’s announcement that the Trump Administration...

“Respect,” “transparency,” and “teamwork” only got one vote each. Oh, and so did “humility.” The seven members of the largest school district in the country with an elected board gathered Tuesday at their first off-site retreat of the year, where they took a deep dive into health benefits but also hashed out core values for LA...

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...