The California Supreme Court today declined to review an appellate court ruling that overturned the landmark Vergara v. California teacher tenure case. Here are key excerpts from the dissenting opinions of State Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and State Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu: The nine schoolchildren who brought this action, along with the millions of children whose educational...

Hiring more teachers, moving the school year to start after Labor Day, training workers to fix air conditioners and offering health benefits for teachers assistants and playground aides are some of the items on the list for the Tuesday afternoon’s LA Unified School Board meeting kicking off the new year. The school board will also be...

As enrollment declines, L.A. public schools borrow a tactic from the charters: marketing As enrollment in traditional public schools around the city has declined and charter schools have mushroomed, principals are having to compete for students or risk school closure. To do this, they are turning to marketing tactics long employed by charter schools: handing...

*UPDATED The first day of middle school can be a pretty nerve-racking experience for almost any kid. You don’t know anyone, you have no friends, you don’t know where your classes are, you don’t know your teachers, you don’t know the rules and you don’t know what is expected of you. But PUC Schools, an...

LA charter school faces possible closure over ‘fiscal mismanagement’ Alleging fiscal mismanagement and “fatal flaws in judgment,” Los Angeles Unified staff will ask the district’s Board of Education on Tuesday to issue a “notice of violations” to El Camino Real Charter High School — the first step to revoking its charter, according to the district....

Despite temperatures hovering in the 90s for the rest of the week for many LA Unified schools, calls for air-conditioning repairs haven’t gotten out of hand. Yet a proposal being introduced by three LA Unified School board members next week could change the start of the school year until after Labor Day, and one of the biggest reasons given...

Haddon Elementary Avenue School is so in demand that families want to drive their children across the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills to attend the Pacoima school. Haddon is not a charter school, it’s not a new pilot program and it’s not a magnet school (yet). It’s a traditional Title 1 district school in a...

Three LA board members will push for school to start after Labor Day Three Los Angeles school board members will begin a push next week to start the following school year after Labor Day. The traditional academic year began Tuesday, a full three weeks before Labor Day, which falls on the first Monday in September. The resolution, to be...

Middle school enrollment has consistently declined over the past 10 years in district schools. One school lost 858 students. But charters and magnet programs are growing.  LA Unified is attempting to quell the enrollment drop-off as 133,000 students have left the district since 2006-07 and middle schools have emerged as a key battleground. During the past 10 years, the...

The California Supreme Court’s decision on whether to take up Vergara v. California, a landmark ruling that challenged teacher tenure and declared some school employment laws unconstitutional, could come as early as this afternoon. Today is the court’s last scheduled conference before the Monday deadline to say whether it will review an appellate court’s ruling in the...