Via the Los Angeles Times | By Howard Blume, Richard Winton and Alan Zarembo The Los Angeles Unified School District said it would not reverse its decision to fire former Miramonte Elementary teacher Martin Springer after charges against him were dropped Wednesday, officials said. L.A. County prosecutors canceled Springer’s pending trial after the teacher’s young...

Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school operator with 12 schools chartered through LAUSD, announced this morning that it will expand its blending learning curriculum to all of its elementary schools in the Los Angeles region by the end of the 2015-16 school year. The expansion is supported by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation,...

  Never say LA Unified doesn’t look out for the kids. This press release arrived from the district yesterday, so everyone can relax:       L.A. UNIFIED’S STATEMENT ON GRAPHIC IMAGES OF COWS DISTRIBUTED TO STUDENTS DURING ANIMAL ACTIVIST PROTEST A cow and a calf, part of a mobile classroom provided by the Dairy...

Only two LA Unified school board members hold law degrees: Tamar Galatzan and Monica Ratliff. But Steve Zimmer, a college professor, did a pretty good impression of a lawyer last night. Zimmer presided over an ad hoc “committee of one” — no other board members attended — that was charged with defining the role and scope...

A stunning silence fell over the courtroom today when Bhavini Bhakta, the first teacher to testify in the Vergara v California trial, described the impact of the state’s current teacher dismissal and seniority laws. An award-winning educator with two master’s degrees, she recounted how despite her success, the warm embrace of her students and the...

An intergovernmental pilot project began last week to address potential environmental health hazards in Southern California schools, with LAUSD as the only school district involved as a core particpant. The six month pilot program, known as the Southern California – Clean, Green and Healthy Schools Partnership, is intended to foster collaboration among local, state and federal regulators...

Teams of students across LA Unified are preparing for the kickoff this weekend of the Aspen Challenge, a citywide competition launched by the Aspen Institute in partnership with the school district. In an effort to hone social entrepreneurial skills, the program challenges students to find solutions to a series of pressing social issues presented to...

It took six days of testimony to finally put a human face on the legal issues in Vergara vs. California, and it wasn’t Beatriz Vergara or any of the other eight plaintiffs challenging the state and its biggest teacher unions. Rather it was Joey Raymond, the son of the former Sacramento City Unified superintendent, Jonathan...

Testimony resumes this morning in Vergara v California, with Troy Christmas of the Oakland Unified School District returning to the stand to face cross examination by lawyers for the defendants — the state and its two big teachers unions. Christmas, the Director of Labor Management and Employee Relations for his district, has largely plowed the...

After the first week of the groundbreaking trial Vergara vs. California in a California superior court, lawyers and witnesses talked a lot about ineffective teachers, arcane rules for dismissing them and how much money it costs. One thing they didn’t talk about was Beatriz Vergara. The lawsuit in her name — she’s an LA Unified...