The LA Unified school board put its money where its mouth is at its May 10 meeting and approved a $3 million expansion of its growing magnet program. The move comes after months of public comments from district leaders pointing to the popular magnet program as a way to increase enrollment in the district. Two...

By Naomi Nix (Bridgeport, Connecticut)  —When veteran Bridgeport journalist Nancy Hendrick greeted the start of 1961 with a blistering column called “What’s Wrong With Bridgeport,” the inequalities that afflict the city today were already evident everywhere she looked. “Suddenly we are all aware of the sharp contrast between private opulence and public squalor that exists within...

LA school board president: Gender neutral bathrooms for all middle and high schools LAUSD officials came out in support of the Obama administration’s guidance for protecting transgender students from discrimination. City News Service A transgender 9-year-old tells her story, Los Angeles Times Schools offer lessons on accommodating transgender students, Los Angeles Daily News States dig...

LA Unified’s school board this week approved spending $18 million on more than 900 classrooms and office spaces for 25,000 charter school students using classrooms that are co-located on 94 traditional district school sites. The money is coming from Prop. 39 funds. Prop. 39, passed by California voters in 2000, allows charter schools to use under-utilized...

By Michael Vaughn The Los Angeles teachers union just spent $82,000 on a report that concludes that the thousands of Los Angeles families who are choosing to send their children to charter schools are costing the LA school district a half-billion dollars annually. The report “doesn’t fault charters,” according to the LA Times, “saying that...

The key to reducing school suspensions? Treat kids with empathy, says study Researchers from Stanford University found that when teachers are reminded to approach students with an empathic mindset, rates of school suspensions go down. Students who get suspended from school are more likely to later drop out and face jail time. By Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post...

Although the brawl that took place on the Sylmar High School campus Monday is garnering national attention, it’s for the wrong reasons. “It was not race related, it was not about bullying,” said principal James Lee, who came to the school four years ago. Lee allowed students to take over the stage on Wednesday night at...

By Jill Tucker The taxpayer-supported Teach for America program, which supplies enthusiastic if inexperienced teachers to thousands of schools in lower-income areas across the country, has fallen out of favor in San Francisco. The city’s school board made clear this week that staffing some of the city’s neediest classrooms with recent college graduates who are...

Actor Danny Trejo joins students in discussion over 40-student lunchtime brawl at Sylmar High After a wild brawl involving 40 students at Sylmar High School on Monday, students and actor Danny Trejo met Wednesday night to express their frustration with the school board. “What happened on Monday we would all agree is an unacceptable occurrence,” Superintendent Michelle...

The LA Unified school board broke into a surprise closed session for several hours Tuesday afternoon in the middle of their public meeting in order to head off a potential “parent trigger” lawsuit over 20th Street Elementary School. All morning, the school board was in closed session to discuss employee actions, contract renewals and pending litigation....