LA School Report

Nowhere in the Los Angeles Unified District are the feelings of parent frustration, anger, and confusion more palpable than in the district’s central parent committees. These are groups of parents elected by their peers in local districts to represent the parent voice and provide feedback to the superintendent and Board of Education. It is here...

*Updated Feb. 15 Despite parents’ pleas to deal now with a coming deficit that could require huge cuts, a narrow majority of LA Unified’s school board on Tuesday approved a new contract that commits the district to paying for its employees’ generous health benefits at current levels for the next three years. The contract passed 4-2, with...

Adam Anderson, a third-way candidate for California’s state superintendent of instruction, has pulled out of the race. Anderson, 36, was educated in California public schools through college. He spent six years in Chicago and directed strategy and policy at Chicago Public Schools before returning to California in 2014 to lead strategy and operations at EducationSuperHighway,...

Every week, we sit down with Los Angeles parents to talk about their students, their schools, and what questions or suggestions they have for their school district. (See our previous interviews.) For parents, finding a good school for their children can be exhausting, especially as they search for the right tools and resources to compare...

As the Los Angeles teachers union continues to try to organize educators at the city’s largest charter school network, teachers at one of the few independent charter schools that joined the union voted to leave it after less than two years because union officials were pushing their own agenda, according to interviews and documents reviewed...

A record number of parents this year are trying to get into LA Unified’s magnet and dual-language programs, and for the first time, they were able to use a new unified enrollment system that simplifies the application process. District officials said most parents who used the online system gave positive feedback. But some parents encountered errors...

A memorial service for Shirley Ford will be held at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 3, at 24th Street Elementary School. Please email [email protected] to RSVP and to share thoughts, memories, pictures, and stories.  Shirley Ford, 69, a Los Angeles mother who helped pass California’s landmark “parent trigger” legislation and made an indelible mark in...

Every week, we sit down with Los Angeles parents to talk about their students, their schools, and what questions or suggestions they have for their school district. (See our previous interview.) Denia Barreto has two English learners at Sylmar Leadership Academy. Starting this month, her children, along with the 1.4 million English learners throughout the...

As LA Unified continues to lose 12,000 students every year, administrators will be notified of expected job losses, restrictions could be made on how to spend one-time funds coming from the state, and labor partners will be called on to be part of the solution. Next year’s projected enrollment decline was reported Tuesday by Chief Financial...