LA School Report

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl welcomed teachers to the new school year and urged them to get involved in a media campaign for late August, according to a recorded robo-call that went out last night. In the recorded message by Caputo-Pearl sent out Sunday night before teachers return to school, he complimented teachers for the “amazing people...

An announcement from LA Unified. For more see lausd.net. At Nightingale Middle School, a college degree is within grasp, thanks to a new program there requiring students and their parents to attend Saturday classes. The Neighborhood Academic Initiative has a new home at Nightingale in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles. Directed by the...

By John Deasy  “First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate...

LAUSD expands class offerings to slow declining enrollment With most Los Angeles Unified students returning to classes Tuesday after summer break, the nation’s second-largest school district is expected to see its 14th consecutive year of declining enrollment. As of last year, LAUSD schools have lost more than 86,400 students — 15 percent of its population...

Two more people this week entered the March 7 race for LA Unified school board. Gregory Martayan will join Nick Melvoin in challenging board President Steve Zimmer for his District 4 seat. And Joanne Baltierrez-Fernandez joins one other challenger in seeking an open seat in District 6. Martayan and Baltierrez-Fernandez filed with the city Ethics Commission on...

How LA Unified plans to help schools track English Learners to proficiency A new tool handled by LA Unified’s MiSiS computer system will help give principals monthly reports on the more than 140,000 English Learner students. Research shows that students who are not reclassified as English proficient by middle school are at a higher risk...

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and LA Unified announced today that Grape Street Elementary in Watts will be added into the organization’s network of schools. It will be the 19th school the nonprofit organization will now operate. “The district approached us about supporting Grape Street, and the promise there is as great as the...

On the first day of orientation for her all-girls school on Wednesday, Principal Liz Hicks seemed relatively calm. She personally answered her phone at her office as she was in the middle of preparing for the high-profile school celebration coming up Friday morning. “I’m feeling a little pressure, but I’m mostly excited because this dream...

*UPDATED This is the first in a five-part series about teacher sustainability in Los Angeles and California public schools and the available solutions to reversing teacher turnover. When I was growing up in Birmingham, Ala., nearly 30 years ago, the same teachers taught kindergarten year after year. It was almost a given that my sister...