Imagine a restaurant that is losing customers. Instead of cutting back, the owner hires more servers. As revenues decline, the waiters demand higher pay and more busboys to help them serve fewer customers.  That might sound like the premise of an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. But something very similar is happening right now...

Lauren McNally recalls when the checks began showing up at her house in 2021. As part of the expanded, refundable child tax credit, McNally and her husband were among 36 million families who received monthly checks from the federal government to offset the costs of raising their children. “It helped us pay off some credit...

This story was reported by Mark Keierleber and written by Kathy Moore Months before the Los Angeles school board approved a $6.2 million contract with AllHere, an AI chatbot maker that is now being investigated by the FBI, top district leaders were invited to a meeting with its CEO and a consultant, who is a...

This story was originally published by EdSource Thousands of California school employees have received preliminary pink slips in recent weeks as districts scrabble to close budget gaps caused by falling enrollment and rising costs. Most went to school administrators and classified school staff, such as clerks, administrative assistants and paraeducators. Districts were complying with a state...

This story was originally published on EdSource. The Los Angeles Unified School District has approved a resolution at its Tuesday board meeting to avoid contracting with vendors that support federal immigration actions.  The resolution, approved unanimously, would require the district to review its existing vendors and contracts to determine whether they enable immigration enforcement actions...

This story was originally published on EdSource. When Mike Lawrence joined ABC Unified School District as director of information and technology two years ago, he inherited a set of guidelines on the district’s approach to artificial intelligence tools. The next step was opening up the conversation to the broader education community, said Lawrence, so the...

America is celebrating its 250th birthday this year. At a moment when new technologies and other societal changes are reshaping how people access information, make decisions, and participate in civic life, it is more important than ever for anyone with a role in public education to reevaluate and assess the question:  What steps are being...

If you spend enough time in public schools, you start to notice a pattern: Every year, districts warn of another round of cuts, another school closing, another program squeezed out of existence. Families hear about declining enrollment; teachers hear about shortages and burnout. Somewhere in the middle of all this, a quiet idea has taken...

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory Monday to those who argue that schools should inform parents if their child changes their gender identity, even without the student’s consent. In the California case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, the conservative justices reinstated a December district court decision that temporarily blocked schools from keeping such information private or...

During the course of one conversation last Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom emerged as an unexpected new spokesman for people with dyslexia — while also stirring up a small-scale controversy over learning disabilities and the politics of literacy. At an event to promote his new memoir, the California Democrat revealed that he “cannot read a speech”...