Administrators from Pacific Palisades Charter High School were on pins and needles earlier this week as the LA Unified school board considered its renewal application. But the board’s approval on Nov. 18 was hardly the end of the story. At a meeting at the beachside high school last night, about 15 neighborhood residents showed up to complain...

The message was clear from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo-Pearl as he spoke to hundreds of energetic, amped-up supporters yesterday: If teachers are going to get the raise and other concessions they are demanding from LA Unified in a new contract, it is going to be a fight. “Now folks, we’ve got...

LA Unified has reached a settlement worth almost $140 million with 81 victims and their families from the sex abuse scandal involving former teacher Mark Berndt at Miramonte Elementary School. The exact amount, $139,250,000, is the largest settlement involving LA Unified and possibly of any school district in the country. “This puts to rest all...

The Los Angeles Unified School District has just announced a settlement today in civil cases stemming from the actions of a former teacher at Miramonte Elementary School. The school district resolved the remaining Miramonte litigation at issue for a total of $139,250,000. “There is nothing more important to us than the safety of the students...

The LA Unified Bond Oversight Committee today agreed to approve another $25 million in bond fund spending to help the district fix MiSiS problems and equip schools with computers for standardized testing in the Spring. A team of district officials, including Superintendent Ramon Cortines, made lengthy presentations to the nine member committee, insisting that in...

* UPDATED If you are required to do it, is it still “volunteering”? That is the question at the heart of a report issued yesterday by Public Advocates, which researched 555 charter schools in California and found that 30 percent of them require parents to do work at the school for a set quota of...

Via The Huffington Post | By David Lyell In my 13 years of teaching at over 100 schools within LAUSD, K-12, regular and special education, students have asked me this question more times than I care to remember. While some question the commitment and contribution of substitute teachers, the tired cliche of a Substitute Teacher...

El Rancho Unified, a small, majority Latino school district of a dozen schools in Pico Rivera, is way head of LA Unified in setting up an Ethnic Studies program, which the LA Unified board approved just this week. By next year in El Rancho, a high school course in Ethnic Studies will be required for...

Earlier this month, Arnold Viramontes, an outside expert hired by former superintendent John Deasy, issued a report to LA Unified that was a scathing indictment of the new MiSiS system, finding that “red conditions” arose early and should have signified “No Go.” This week, in it’s weekly newsletter, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) expressed disappointment with...