Nearly 1,600 LA Unified administrators will be notified in mid-March that their contracts may end in June. But is this attempt at bringing administrative staff more in line with the declining number of students too late to help a looming budget deficit, as some school board members fear? Or will there even be a staff reduction?...

When Hrag Hamalian opened Valor Academy Middle School in 2009, teacher retention was his foremost concern, so he decided to find out what educators desired in the workplace. Now executive director of Bright Star Schools, which includes six other charter schools, Hamalian surveyed his highly effective teachers in search of the answer. He found that...

Although he’s currently the recipient of campaign cash in what may be the most expensive school board race ever, LA Unified board President Steve Zimmer pushed through a “Clean Money” resolution on Tuesday but said it is not about him. Zimmer convinced his often disparate group of colleagues on the school board to unanimously approve the...

As the political rhetoric around charter schools heats up locally and nationally, Los Angeles charter school parents are not only defending their right to choose a school for their child but are now advocating for their place in the public education landscape. The shift was on display last week during two events in downtown Los...

Abella Aleman was intently reading her first-grade class a Valentine’s Day letter about her love for her dad, Omar, a Navy sailor who had been deployed overseas for more than a year. So intently, she didn’t even notice when he crept into her Rancho San Diego Elementary School classroom and stood behind her chair. As...

By Daniel Heimpel, The Chronicle of Social Change The California Department of Education “derailed” local education agencies’ efforts to ensure transportation for students in foster care, imperiling a $1.8 billion federal grant aimed at poor students, according to an email shared with The Chronicle and an education administrator in San Diego. This while Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors...

The lawyers who challenged union fees in the high-stakes Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case have filed a new lawsuit in hopes of achieving a decisive Supreme Court victory — a result denied to them last year when a tie vote left mandatory dues in place. The Center for Individual Rights filed Yohn v. California Teachers Association on Monday. The...

Last year LA Unified board members were shocked to learn that higher utility rates could jack up the district’s utility bill by $24 million. So they swung into action with energy-saving measures. But on Tuesday they learned they could be facing even steeper increases — up to 50 percent more. Even with a 13 percent...

The only pre-arrest juvenile diversion program in California is seeking nearly $1 million to expand into the San Fernando Valley, so its leaders came Tuesday to the cash-strapped LA Unified to ask for about half of it. Although four of the seven school board members at the budget committee meeting spoke positively about the program, they...

Betsy DeVos is, after weeks of public outcry, marathon Senate speeches and the narrowest and sharpest of partisan vote margins, the eleventh U.S. secretary of education. In a pro-forma and decidedly undramatic endnote, Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking “aye” to confirm DeVos, 51-50 at 12:30 p.m., marking the first time ever a vice...