If anything, it was good television. LA Unified school board members confronted each other headlong in a dramatic discussion Tuesday night over whether charter schools were being treated fairly by the district. The discussion opened calls for a deep dive into how district staff comes up with its recommendations for denials or approvals of charter schools....

High school counselors can be the secret weapon in winning admissions for first-generation college applicants.

L.A. teachers union seeks to raise dues as it fights a charter school push This week the union asked its 32,000 members — down from 45,000 in 2008 — to raise their dues by nearly a third. The votes will be counted Wednesday. Los Angeles Times, by Howard Blume ICE agents won’t be going onto...

Going into Tuesday’s LA Unified school board meeting, three-for-three was the Charter School Division’s recommendations against two new charters and a renewal. In the end, it went the other way, with two votes going in charters’ favor (a new school plus a renewal for the Partnership to Uplift Communities) and one vote postponed (a new charter...

  In dual votes Tuesday about a long-vacant school in the west San Fernando Valley, the LA Unified school board halted a charter school that was previously proposed for the site and instead allowed a district school to pursue it. The school board gave a unanimous thumbs-up for Hale Charter Academy to pursue a proposal to develop a performing...

The LA Unified school board is scheduled to hold an open session meeting today at 1 p.m. Items up for discussion include a vote on the closed Highlander campus in the San Fernando Valley, which El Camino Real wants to develop into a K-8 campus. There will also be votes and public meetings on several charter school applications and...

*UPDATED A number of charter school operators across LA Unified say the district and its school board are turning up the heat on them to an unbearable degree while using the Charter Schools Division and Office of Inspector General to make approval and renewals of charter schools increasingly difficult. They claim there has been an increase...

  By Kathy Kantner, Rachel Greene and Juan Jose Mangandi Readers of LA School Report’s coverage of the Feb. 2 meeting of the Board of Education’s Early Childhood Education and Parent Engagement Subcommittee can be forgiven if they only perceived the heat in the boardroom but not the light. It would be unfortunate, however, if LA School Report’s overly...

By Richard Whitmire Recent big-dollar donations from pro-charter philanthropists leave traditional educators sputtering: Why don’t they just donate their money to us? Good question, and one that was raised in Los Angeles recently in light of a possible huge gift from philanthropist Eli Broad and others that appears headed mostly to charter schools. LAUSD board...

Under the leaking roofs of Los Angeles Unified schools Every time El Niño dumps rain on the city, dozens of LA Unified schools feel the impact of old architecture and outdated roofs. Los Angeles Times, by Sonali Kohli How two San Fernando Valley schools have kept learning after an epic gas leak After LA Unified took the...