LA School Report

By Marshall Tuck This year, we have a chance to help students and protect taxpayers across California, and I hope we don’t miss it. The California State Legislature is currently considering whether to ban for-profit charter schools. Educators — whether at district or charter public schools — can agree: public schools must serve students, not shareholders....

U.S. News and World Report has released its 2017 rankings of America’s public high schools, and for the first time ever, the majority of the schools in the top 10 are charters. BASIS Scottsdale, BASIS Tucson North, and BASIS Oro Valley — all Arizona public charter schools in the BASIS network — placed one, two, and three atop...

LA Unified’s new Expanded Transitional Kindergarten program, which is serving nearly 30,000 children younger than age 5, is already facing challenges that threaten it, and the district will assess it at the end of the school year. Dean Tagawa, the executive director of the Early Childhood Education Division, said that a $5 million hold on state...

Fourth Street Elementary’s students are supposed to receive nearly $10.5 million under the state’s funding formula, but a new database published by the California Charter Schools Association shows that the East LA school has just $5.4 million to spend. The database’s release comes after a wave of criticisms levied against LA Unified and other California...

*UPDATED Steve Zimmer and Nick Melvoin met Sunday evening in their first one-on-one debate, heading into the final three weeks before the May 16 runoff for the LA Unified District 4 school board seat. Moderator Dr. Fernando J. Guerra of Loyola Marymount University had to dig deep at times to find daylight between Zimmer, the...

Darryl Adams put an iPad in the hands of every one of the 18,000 students in the Coachella Valley Unified School District, one of the poorest districts in the nation. Then he installed Wi-Fi on school buses and parked those buses throughout the district’s 1,250 square miles, so those kids’ iPads could get online. “The...

*UPDATED Negative campaigning has reached an all-time high as the nation’s most-watched school board race enters its final month. And all four LA Unified board candidates don’t like what’s being said in their name. The independent organizations including unions and charter groups that are campaigning for — and against — them have no involvement with the...

By Mike Antonucci The California Teachers Association is not only on the opposite coast from the New York State United Teachers, it is on the opposite side of the financial ledger. While NYSUT battles budget deficits and cumbersome staff pension debt, CTA has loads of cash, consistent budget surpluses, net assets of more than $300 million,...

*UPDATED After passionate debate and pleas from charter school administrators and parents, the LA Unified school board voted 4-3 to support three teacher union-backed bills being considered by the California legislature that all restrict some of the autonomies given to public charter schools. The most contested bill, SB 808, was pulled by its author on Monday...