By Dennis Romero California lawmakers want to teach teens how to say yes to sex. And the state Assembly just passed the bill that would do just that. SB 695 by Senate President Pro Tempore de León of L.A. and Jackson and Sen.  Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara would require high schools to teach the “yes means yes”...

Another charter war is brewing in LA Unified. But the early warning shots are taking aim at ambiguity, not facts. The flashpoint was two sentences in an Aug. 7 story in the LA Times that described a meeting at which three major foundations discussed plans to expand the number of charter schools in the district. The...

The LA Unified school board yesterday picked the search firm to find the district’s next superintendent, completing a relatively speedy process that suggests the members want a successor in place when Ramon Cortines steps down in December. The search process began Sunday, when the board narrowed the field to two head-hunter firms from five and was...

By Helena Bottemiller Evich As the Republican battle against Michelle Obama’s school lunch standards resumes in Congress later this month, some food giants are quietly backing away from their fight with the first lady. Many companies, such as Schwan’s, that once vigorously fought key elements of the initiative to trim sodium, fat and calories from...

An elementary school principal who was removed over the summer after a wave of parental protests took her case before the LAUSD School Board today in an effort to win reinstatement. Gail Greer was removed from the Mid-City’s Prescott School of Enriched Sciences Magnet Elementary School on July 27 by Superintendent Ramon Cortines after parents...

LA Unified has announced that Judy Burton has stepped down as chair of the Instructional Technology Initiative Taskforce, which is guiding the district’s tech objectives in the wake of the cancelled iPad program. Burton resigned as CEO and president of Alliance College-Ready Public Schools in January, the same month she was named to head up the...

The interview process starts today at the LA Unified school board meeting, with plans to hear from representatives of two headhunter firms in the search for the district’s next superintendent. Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates of Rosemont, Ill. and Leadership Associates of La Quinta, Calif. were picked from among five bidders by the board on Sunday. They were...

By The Editorial Board Kindergarten hasn’t been its old self for a long time. After decades of increasing focus on academics, it recently became more standardized as well; the curriculum for California’s 5-year-olds is now aligned with the Common Core academic standards. Kindergarten teachers are no longer preoccupied with keeping their squirmy charges from eating...

Ever since the FBI seized documents in December related to LA Unified’s controversial iPad program, there have been no public updates on the case, but now it appears that the LA Unified school board and its legal department see trouble coming. It is just a single line in the agenda for tomorrow’s closed board meeting,...