LA School Report

A bill that would allow middle and high schoolers to sleep in later failed to gain legislative support and will be reconsidered next year. The bill, SB 328 — a statewide prohibition against starting school before 8:30 a.m. for public middle and high schools — won only 26 of the 41 votes it needed in...

This Tuesday, the school board will meet in a non-voting session, called the Committee of the Whole. It will be the first meeting of the board since last week’s revelations of felony charges against school board President Ref Rodriguez. That news came just after last Tuesday’s board meeting, the second that Rodriguez presided over as...

George McKenna is known for waxing eloquently during the school board meetings, and at the meeting on Sept. 12, he wrote down some of his thoughts. Part of the reason was because the new board President Ref Rodriguez is limiting statements to five minutes per topic by each of the board members, but part of it...

The man who helped craft the state’s parent trigger law and who founded Parent Revolution has launched a new organization that aims to put a kids-first agenda into practice and give LA Unified students and their parents legal rights in decisions about their education. The organization is called Kids Coalition and will be headed by...

A controversial bill that would have established California’s first state-run STEM school ran into a wall of opposition, including from a broad coalition of unions, and failed to gain enough support as the legislative session ended Friday.  The bill, AB 1217, was authored by Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-San Fernando, and Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge....

*Updated Monday, July 23: Ref Rodriguez resigned from the LA Unified board Monday morning after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to his election campaign in 2015.  In a statement, Rodriguez said:  “It has been the honor of my life to serve the communities of Board District 5 as their L.A. Unified board member. I have...

DACA youth were “defrauded” by the government and were victims of their own success, a panel of experts, including DACA recipients, concluded at one of the workshops for journalists at the conference “EWA: Journalism for Latinos in Education in the Trump Era” on Monday in Anaheim. The elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), announced...

On Wednesday Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi announced they are moving closer  to a deal with President Trump that would protect hundreds of thousands of DACA “Dreamers” from deportation.  However, the uncertainty among “Dreamers” remains as on the day of the announcement of the end of DACA last week. Luis Eduardo (he chose...

The California State Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve its plan to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, culminating a year and a half of work with dozens of public meetings and comment periods. Whether it will be accepted, however, is far from clear. The plan is required under the new federal...

LA Unified has settled three cases involving the firing of Rafe Esquith, a celebrated teacher who won many national and international awards, the district announced late Tuesday. The case ends a threatened $1 billion federal class-action lawsuit against the district by attorney Mark Geragos, who was representing Esquith about 2,000 other teachers in opposing the district’s...