LA School Report

Of the $1.7 billion that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged to public education over the next five years, the majority will go toward supporting innovations within schools that have joined together in collaborative networks. Philanthropist Bill Gates made the announcement in Cleveland Thursday afternoon during his keynote speech at the Council of...

“DACA is dead. The Dream Act is a permanent solution for us, and that’s what we’re fighting for now,” said Paulina, an LA Unified graduate from Fremont High School and a DACA recipient who met on Wednesday with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, LA Unified board members, and business and community leaders in Los Angeles...

Partnerships to Uplift Communities, the charter school network co-founded by school board member Ref Rodriguez, released 109 pages of documents Wednesday relating to its conflict-of-interest complaint filed against Rodriguez. PUC alleges that Rodriguez illegally authorized $285,000 in payments to nonprofit organizations he oversaw during his tenure at PUC, as first reported Monday by the Los Angeles Times....

*UPDATED Shockwaves reverberated through the Los Angeles education community last month when the LA County District Attorney filed charges against LA Unified school board President Ref Rodriguez alleging he engaged in political money laundering during his election two years ago. New allegations were revealed Monday when the Los Angeles Times published a report saying that...

* UPDATE For the first time since LA Unified began authorizing independent charter schools, a charter school coalition is asking for major revisions in language and restrictions in their school petitions. And the school district seems more open than ever to making those compromises. Both sides say the changes are not aimed at increasing the...

California community college students now have a faster route to a four-year degree, thanks to two new state laws. On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 705, allowing more students access to college-level courses instead of remedial courses when they start community college, and AB 19, giving all first-time students in the state a free...

Eli Broad, the prominent education philanthropist and charter school booster, is retiring to spend more time with his family, according to release from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The Broads have given away more than $4 billion to education, health and science research, and contemporary-arts causes. They’ve pledged to give away 75 percent of their wealth....

Update:  Los Angeles County’s board of education on Tuesday denied Denon Carr’s charter application but urged him to make changes to the proposal and resubmit it as quickly as possible to either the Inglewood School Board or the state board. Carr says he will appeal, though he is not yet sure to which entity. For...

This article first appeared in The Chronicle of Social Change.  Teachers and school staff in Los Angeles County will now be able to make child abuse reports online, thanks to a motion approved this week. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday signed off on a plan that will allow the county’s Department...

Pension payouts are growing so fast that California’s school districts are being forced to lay off staff and close schools, a Stanford professor and author of a new study says. LA Unified will have to cut spending by about 3 percent in 12 years in order to pay for the ballooning cost of its retirees’ pensions,...