LA School Report

Despite record-breaking rainfall over the past week in Los Angeles, the number of leaks and flooding issues at LA Unified schools is minimal and administrators credit the preparations they did for last year’s rather wimpy El Niño.  As of Monday morning, there were 2,000 open service calls for issues throughout the district, but only 20...

Education leaders in Los Angeles along with families and members of the community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles on Thursday celebrated that one of their neighborhood’s schools — KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory School (KIPP LA Prep) — has been named a 2016 National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. The National Blue...

Forty-two percent of LA Unified’s 2016 graduates re-took a class they had previously failed or needed some other kind of credit recovery in order to graduate, district officials said Thursday. Superintendent Michelle King announced in August that the preliminary graduation rate was a record 75 percent, but the district had not calculated how many students...

Community leaders, parents and even educators across Los Angeles agree that navigating LA Unified can be confounding and frustrating, so on Thursday two groups — United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Communities for Los Angeles Student Success (CLASS) Coalition — launched a Parent Engagement Toolkit to help parents understand academic terms, education policies,...

  About 400 parents, teachers and students joined union leaders at a Los Angeles elementary school on Thursday, one day before the presidential inauguration, to protest the incoming administration and to support public schools. The demonstration, called a “Shield Our Schools Action,” drew thousands throughout LA Unified, said President Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers...

In preparation for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, LA Unified has declared Friday “Unity Day.” In addition, a district official said LA Unified will be prepared for any potential policy changes under the new Trump Administration and any resulting loss of federal funding. Pedro Salcido of LA Unified’s Office of Government Relations said the district is...

  About two dozen pilot programs throughout LA Unified are helping prepare the entire district for new, more comprehensive state science tests that fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders will start taking in 2019. The new California Science Test (CAST) will replace the California Standards Test (CST). It will be taken on computers rather than on paper and...

Honoring the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., hundreds of young volunteers from City Year in coordination with local partners on Monday commemorated Dr. King’s dream of the “Beloved Community” by beautifying Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles. City Year, a national organization dedicated to helping students and schools succeed by...

As LA Unified struggles to right its financial ship, the high costs of educating children with special needs have come under a microscope. One strategy being used is identifying children in the infant and preschool years to help integrate them sooner into the general education population, which then cuts back on referrals to expensive special...

By Ama Nyamekye Twenty-two U.S. Senators will sit before Betsy DeVos on Tuesday morning and determine her qualifications to serve as Secretary of Education, a critical role in shaping education policy across our nation. Along with determining the direction for the Department of Education for years to come, this confirmation hearing will prove crucial for another...