Mayor Eric Garcetti and LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy, along with several private groups, today announced new  citywide initiative to keep youth engaged in learning this summer, the Los Angeles Summer of Learning. The program provides access to 100 learning opportunities online and in person at LA parks and libraries, LAUSD schools and museums and cultural institutions,...

Sixth in a series of profiles of candidates for the LA Unified’s open District 1 board seat. Community and union activist Hattie McFrazier, one of seven candidates on the ballot for LAUSD’s District 1 board seat, has worked in LA Unified for more than 30 years, giving her what she believes is a firm grasp...

Via the Los Angeles Daily News | By Monica Garcia, Beatriz Maria Solis and Maria Brenes Schools have long served as trusted and safe places for community and families to gather. In addition to being places where parents entrust their children for education, schools have inherent connections to communities as parent centers, polling places, and...

Today the Los Angeles Unified School Board tackles a hefty agenda that includes hammering out details of next year’s budget in a meeting that could extend late into the evening. While there’s no vote on the budget until early summer, the board has been hearing from community and labor groups on how to allocate new money from...

Sometimes it takes a rally to get things done. Nearly 200 parents and their children from Bright Star Stella and Bright Star Secondary gathered on Saturday to campaign for a new charter school in West Adams. The families have identified an abandoned facility that they want turned into a new school that would house all...

Via The Nation | By JoAnn Wypijewski  Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as “teacher jail”: she doesn’t belong there....

More than 40 education and community groups signed a full-page ad that ran in today’s Los Angeles Times, urging the LA Unified school board to provide more support for high needs students in the up-coming budget. The ad appears a day before a board meeting when issues of the budget will be a large part of...

Anyone attending a recent LA Unified School Board meeting has heard Monica Ratliff talk about “providing a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students” by boosting the district’s custodial staff. Tomorrow she’ll lay out her plan for doing it. Item No. 47 on another loooooong agenda, represents Ratliff’s attempt to hire 108 new full-time...

LA Unified has claimed a second victory in a major academic competition. Marshall High School won the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon Online competition, scoring 39,461 out of a possible 48,000 points. The win follows El Camino Real Charter High School’s victory in the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon championship last month. Marshall represented California in the...

Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive, is challenging incumbent Tom Torlakson to become California’s next State Superintendent of Public Education. The race includes Lydia Gutierrez, a former teacher who also ran four years ago. The three are on the statewide June 3 primary ballot. We caught up with Tuck at a forum last week, and...