LA School Report

By CBS Los Angeles Neighbors of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School in Westwood are outraged that the school has recently installed lush, green grass – in the midst of a historic drought. “I find this outrageous considering the Mayor of Los Angles has requested residents to remove their lawns or water as little as possible,”...

Marking a big turnaround managing teacher misconduct Three years after an audit found the average misconduct case could take 22 months, state officials reported that timeline has been cut almost in half. SI&A Cabinet Report Why some in education believe truancy deserves much more attention It’s difficult to pinpoint the size of the challenge because...

The anticipated thousands of 7th graders being sent home for not having their vaccinations didn’t quite happen last week, the first week of school. LA Unified students were at 93 percent compliance, according to Ellen T. Morgan of the district communications office. That percentage “increases every day,” she said. There are about 36,000 7th graders...

LA Unified students are learning about water conservation methods needed locally because of the drought, and the effort got a big boost last week from a $50,000 federal grant. An award from the Environmental Protection Agency is intended to support a pilot program to teach students how to conserve water. It’s part of the “One...

For most kids, getting expelled in the seventh grade for bringing a weapon to school is the beginning of a sad story, the first step into the school-to-prison pipeline. But for Eduardo Pacheco, a recent graduate of LA Unified’s Woodrow Wilson High School, it ended up being a low point from which he slowly rose to...

Some think it is a threat to the public education system. Some welcome it. Members of the LA Unified school board have reacted quite differently to the announcement that the Broad, Keck and Walton Family Foundations are planning to expand the number of charter schools in the district to serve well beyond the 101,000 students...

By Anya Kamenetz Chester E. Finn, Jr. has three very bright granddaughters. He thinks they “have considerable academic potential and are not always being challenged by their schools.” But Finn is not just a proud grandpa; he’s a long-established expert on education policy with the Fordham Institute and Hoover Institution. So its not surprising that...

It’s true: Kindergarten is optional in California Educators and state lawmakers who want to close this achievement gap say it’s time to do away with optional kindergarten for California children. Los Angeles Times Raising graduation bar poses challenges for school districts More than 65,000 LAUSD students were funneled into summer school this year because they...

Now that the MiSiS crisis seems to be in the rear-view mirror, Superintendent Ramon Cortines is focusing on another difficult issue for LAUSD — class sizes. “We are now beginning to make necessary adjustments to class size,” he said in a statement released today. “For instance, we can open a new class and assign an additional...

A teacher at LA Unified filed a lawsuit against the district Wednesday after he was suspended in 2014 over a lewd Facebook page that was created with his name and image on it. A student was eventually arrested by the LAPD and charged with creating the page, but not before the teacher, Jason Duchan, was suspended from...