LA School Report

Early campaign spending in the LA Unified school board runoff election has shifted to the open seat in the San Fernando Valley from the west side race, which dominated the primary election. Three weeks into the May 16 runoff contest, outside groups have spent nearly five times as much on the District 6 race compared...

*UPDATED Barack Obama’s former Education Secretary Arne Duncan threw his support Wednesday to two pro-reform candidates in the LA Unified school board race. Duncan, who was appointed secretary of education by Obama in 2009, endorsed Nick Melvoin who is running against school board President Steve Zimmer, and is backing Kelly Gonez against Imelda Padilla in...

White parents who stand to lose teachers and counselors at their neighborhood public school in Los Angeles are changing their ethnic status with LA Unified to get around a district policy that strips extra staff from schools that are more than 30 percent white. And some Latino parents who fear deportation under the Trump Administration...

Yolie Flores is one of 24 candidates who will compete in the April 4 special primary election for the 34th Congressional District seat which includes downtown LA, Koreatown and the city’s northeast region. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes, a runoff election will be held on June 6.  When longtime representative Xavier Becerra...

Mónica García started this month’s school board meeting day with an 8 a.m. visit to one of her schools. At 9 she joined the board’s closed session meeting, eating her lunch while it extended right up to the public afternoon meeting. Between votes, she could be found talking to concerned parents in the hallway outside...

Last October, in perhaps the final triumphant moment of his administration, President Obama announced that America’s soaring high school graduation rate had risen, again, to an all-time high of 83 percent. Before he took office, the percentage of students earning diplomas languished for decades in the low to mid-70s; now the news was made still...

Philip Skarin walked a mile and a half to his little school in the Cahuenga Pass in 1930 from Mulholland Drive when it was just a dirt road. There were 16 students in his class at the school that was called Hollywood Park Elementary and opened in 1917. “I came to school barefoot because we...

The girl had already burst into tears when the bold, yellow letters on the man’s jacket came into focus: “Police.” Rómulo Avelica-González had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter, Yuleni, at a Los Angeles charter school — as he did every morning — and was heading next to the school of his 13-year-old daughter, Fatima....

By Stephanie Kozofsky On a recent field trip, Paola told me that she has not seen her parents in four years. A senior, Paola has a 3.4 GPA, is on the flag football team and the varsity soccer team, and is taking a college course after school. Her love for this school, her education, and...

By Phylis Hoffman I was glad when I received tenure in LAUSD. I was also surprised. As a new teacher in LAUSD, I had no idea I was under evaluation for tenure until that moment. Suddenly, the code on my paycheck changed, notifying me I’d been granted the permanent status known as tenure. I’d been...