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Morning Read: Board Strikes a New Tone of Civility

LA School Report | November 12, 2013



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Kumbaya at the L.A. school board?
Editorial: The Los Angeles Unified school board members were conspicuously courteous to the administration staff and to one another at last week’s meeting, their first since the hullabaloo over Supt. John Deasy’s resignation threat. The board and Deasy smoothed that one over, but it was clear that the new, less reform-oriented board majority would have to address its tendency to micromanage and obstruct the administration. LA Times


LA Unified board to vote on future of iPad program
The Los Angeles Unified School board will vote Tuesday on whether to put its controversial iPad program on hold – or move forward, although at a slower pace than originally planned. Board of Education member Monica Ratliff has put forth a plan for vote that would allow more time to study best practices during the pilot project before putting the iPads in every school. KPCC


Push is on to close college gap for California’s Latinos
As a freshman at Cal State San Marcos, Cipriano Vargas’ grades were so low, his part-time job waiting tables so consuming and his home life with eight siblings so chaotic that he was on the verge of dropping out. The first-generation college student and son of parents with an elementary school education struggled to maintain a 1.9 grade point average. LA Times


New Skid Row campus partners Para Los Niños Charter and LAUSD School
If you live in LA — or if you’re even vaguely interested in education — you were probably on pins and needles on Oct. 29, when the fate of LA Unified School Supt. John Deasy was debated in a five-hour, closed-door Board of Education session. As we now know, Deasy will remain in charge of the second-largest school district until 2016. But do you know how John Deasy spent his morning? Huffington Post

A case to combine implementing Common Core and new funding formula
Commentary: Today, with the worst of the budget cuts behind us and two new state policies promoting more local autonomy over financial and programmatic decision-making, we are entering a new era with the potential to revitalize public education. EdSource 


Transgender law repeal effort gets big boost from out of state
Fueled by more than $150,000 in donations just in the last 10 days – much of it from sources outside California – opponents of a new state law broadening the rights of transgender students say they have enough signatures to qualify a repeal initiative. SI&A Cabinet Report


Schools still see surges in homeless students
The Great Recession caused by the 2008 economic and housing crisis has technically ended, but the number of homeless students nationwide continues to swell, as school districts’ capacity to help them shrinks. If added together, homeless students now would make up the largest school district in the country—at nearly 1.17 million, considerably more than the entire student population of New York City public schools. EdWeek

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