LA School Report

The LA Unified school board is meeting later today in open and closed sessions, and one of the items on the agenda appears to suggest that the members may appoint a temporary superintendent until they decide on a permanent successor to Ramon Cortines. The closed session agenda includes “Unrepresented Employee: Superintendent or Acting/Interim Superintendent of...

The 362-word email that prompted Superintendent Ramon Cortines to close down every school in the district on Tuesday has been obtained and released by ABC7. Rep. Brad Sherman and other leaders in California and New York were among those who analyzed the contents and pointed out numerous passages indicating that the author’s threats were not credible....

The Los Angeles police department is moving toward charging celebrated teacher Rafe Esquith with one count of inappropriate touching of a juvenile, LA School Report has learned. The single charge could come within a few weeks after being reviewed by the city attorney and U.S. district attorney’s offices, said LAPD Captain Julian Melendez, head of the...

By James King and Gilad Shiloach ISIS supporters took to social media to gloat about the disruption caused by “credible” bomb threats made against the Los Angeles school system on Tuesday. The threats closed more than 900 schools across the city, abruptly sending hundreds of thousands of students home and throwing the city into disarray. Within minutes...

Handling of L.A. schools shutdown offers a civics lesson Garcetti’s seemingly innocuous statement underscored the jurisdictional divisions that marked L.A. government’s response to the threat. Los Angeles Times, by Peter Jamison and Howard Blume LAUSD works to close two Porter Ranch schools over gas leak The Board of Education is scheduled to consider a proposal...

The LA Unified school board is drawing closer to the end of the search for a new with another closed door meeting scheduled for tomorrow, just after a special open session to discuss the on-going gas leak affecting two nearby schools in the Valley. The board is considering a move to declare emergency conditions at Porter Ranch Community...

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Los Angeles) issued a statement today that released more details from the email threat that closed all of LA Unified schools yesterday. He also explained why authorities in Los Angeles and New York ultimately reached the same conclusion, that the threat was not credible. The full wording of the email has not yet...

UPDATED After a long tense day that resulted in all LA Unified schools being closed due to a bomb and weapons threat, normal routines came back to schools across the district this morning. “Things have gone extraordinarily smoothly,” board President Steve Zimmer told LA School Report. “It’s as close to normal as possible. Even so,...

By Adam Nagourney, Richard Pérez-Peña and J. David Goodman The nation’s two largest school systems confronted threats of a terrorist attack on Tuesday and reacted in sharply different ways: New York City reviewed the warning and dismissed it as a hoax, but officials here abruptly shut down all public schools, upending the lives of parents, students...

The email that shut down LA schools came from an ‘Internet meme sewer’ It’s been traced back to a barebones email server that hosts thousands of accounts. Huffington Post, by Ryan Grenoble Parents, teachers grapple to explain Los Angeles school threat The Los Angeles Unified School District will offer counseling to students when they return...