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After a year on the job, Joseph Vaughn takes a big bite out of LA’s food services deficit, turning each classroom into a mini restaurant

Feeding the kids of Los Angeles has its own set of unique challenges. Not only is it one of the largest school populations in the country with 665,000 mouths to feed every day, the district is now open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at most of its 1,100 locations, dishing up 132 million meals a...
By Mike Szymanski | July 31, 2017
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A deep dive into how Los Angeles-area schools handle pools during the summer

Since it is still the lazy days of summer, we thought we’d dive into some refreshingly cool facts about swimming pools located at schools throughout Los Angeles. At LA Unified, more than one-third of all the high schools in the district have swimming pools, and it costs about $3.9 million annually to maintain them all....
By Mike Szymanski | July 28, 2017
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Exclusive: Data show charter school students graduating from college at three to five times national average

About a decade ago, 15 years into the public charter school movement, a few of the nation’s top charter networks quietly upped the ante on their own strategic goals. No longer was it sufficient to keep students “on track” to college. Nor was it enough to enroll 100 percent of your graduates in colleges. What...
By Richard Whitmire | July 27, 2017
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Exclusive: More kids will be searched for weapons at LAUSD schools this year

Expect more diligent searches at schools this fall as LA Unified officials push principals to meet their daily requirement of metal detector scans of students and random searches of lockers for knives, guns, or drugs. An internal report revealed that some schools are still not doing the mandatory searches of students that the district requires,...
By Mike Szymanski | July 26, 2017
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LA immigrant rights activists prepare for possible teen arrests in ICE raids

Immigrant rights activists in Los Angeles are preparing to assist undocumented youth who may be the target of this week’s federal raids that could include teens. Reuters news service reported that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was planning raids beginning over the weekend and continuing through Wednesday, to arrest suspected gang members who...
By Esmeralda Fabián Romero | July 25, 2017
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New rankings: Most & least educated cities, a tale of two Californias

An annual ranking of America’s most and least educated places reveals a true split in California when it comes to educational equity, with six cities scoring in the top 10 and six cities scoring at the very bottom. San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, taken together, scored third while the area encompassing San Francisco, Oakland,...
By Kate Stringer | July 25, 2017
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In California, only 45 percent of last year’s high school graduates were eligible for public universities

Across California last year, only 45 percent of high school graduates were eligible to attend the state’s public universities. Data from the California Department of Education show that since 2010-11, the percentage of students eligible for admittance into University of California and Cal State University schools has climbed by only 1 or 2 percentage points each...
By Sarah Favot | July 24, 2017
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New DREAM Act bill raises hope among DACA educators for undocumented students

The introduction of a new Dream Act that aims to permanently legalize undocumented youth who came to the country as children sparked optimism among DACA educators in Los Angeles. The new bill presented to Congress on Thursday is even more generous than DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — because it offers a path...
By Esmeralda Fabián Romero | July 21, 2017
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Ed Trust’s Ryan Smith explains ‘The California Way’ in education

At an event filled with 500 Los Angeles education leaders, Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust -West, highlighted the urgent need to ensure that low-income students of color get the best education possible — and how to do it with what he calls “The California Way.” Smith is director of the research and advocacy organization...
By Esmeralda Fabián Romero | July 21, 2017
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King’s first priority for a new LA Unified task force is chronic absenteeism. We break it down for you

Business, philanthropic and community leaders have formed a new task force to work with LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King and its first undertaking will be to tackle chronic absenteeism, the Los Angeles Times reported. LA School Report reported last month that budget documents showed the number of students who were chronically absent — missing 16...
By Sarah Favot | July 19, 2017