Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

It’s Kumbaya time again for the LA Unified school board.

In addition to their next regularly-schedule meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 1, board members are gathering for a “retreat” two days earlier, at a still-to-be-determined time and place on Sunday, Aug. 30.

It’s the first such meeting since Superintendent Ramon Cortines returned nearly a year ago, and it’s likely to be the last of its kind while he’s still in office, inasmuch as he wants to retire, and the board’s No. 1 priority is finding his replacement. 

While a weekend meeting may not ideal for parents and community leaders who would rather spend the time doing, well, anything else, it does give the public a chance to address the members in a less formal setting than the the usual digs of the Beaudry horseshoe.

As for where the members might gather, it’s still under discussion. But unlike UTLA, the teachers union, which held its 2015 Leadership Conference last week at the La Quinta Resort in the desert, the school board is more likely to meet somewhere nearby.

“Within the district or very close,” says Board president Steve Zimmer, thereby sparing members the expense of hotels, transportation costs and other amenities.