LA School Report

* UPDATED The LA teachers union, UTLA, has filed a complaint with the Public Employment Relations Board, accusing Alliance College-Ready Public Schools of interfering with the union’s right to organize teachers in the 26 Alliance schools. The complaint was filed last night, UTLA said in a press release that outlined a series of steps that the...

By Chris Megerian | The Los Angeles Times California could face a strange budget problem in coming months — one resulting from too much revenue rather than too little. In a worst-case scenario outlined by legislative analysts on Tuesday, there could be a $1.3 billion budget gap as higher-than-expected revenue collides with California’s formula for...

Senators announce agreement to update education law Two key senators have announced a bipartisan agreement on rewriting the No Child Left Behind education law. The Huffington Post Kindergarteners’ parents scramble for spots in annual rite of spring The line started forming at Mar Vista during the holiday weekend with parents camping out like Best Buy...

*UPDATED A second round of protests is scheduled at LA Unified schools today as the district and its teachers union, UTLA, continue to lock horns over teacher pay raises, among other issues. “We had full participation at several hundred schools for the first one, and we expect the same today,” UTLA spokeswoman Suzanne Spurgeon told...

*UPDATED Having two Republicans in the runoffs for LA Unified school board seats — Scott Schmerelson in District 3 and Lydia Gutierrez in District 7 — would seem to be a flag-waving event for the California GOP in a Democrat-stronghold city like Los Angeles. Not necessarily. Bowing to the nonpartisan nature of local school board elections, party officials are...

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board On the day they start kindergarten, Latino children are often already at a disadvantage. Their social skills and readiness to listen and learn are top-notch, but their cognitive and verbal skills, abilities that strongly predict future academic success, tend to be significantly less developed than those of their...

LAUSD’s union negotiations, budget woes continue this week The district and UTLA emerged from their second state-mediated gathering Monday with an agreement to meet two more times this week. Los Angeles Daily News Chicago mayoral runoff heads into the last lap Challenger Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, who is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, says Rahm...

California now ranks 29th among all states and the District of Columbia in spending per student, up from 42nd two years ago, according a new report from the California Budget and Policy Center. The jump is attributed in part to Proposition 30’s tax increases, which were approved in November 2012. The new ranking is based...

By Jill Barshay | The Hechinger Report The growing gap between rich and poor is affecting many aspects of life in the United States, from health to work to home life. Now the one place that’s supposed to give Americans an equal chance at life — the schoolhouse — is becoming increasingly unequal as well. I’ve already...

Despite neighborhood opposition to a proposed $30 million Mandarin-immersion elementary school in Mar Vista, LA Unified school board member Steve Zimmer calls the project “a game-changer” in the district’s efforts to reverse years of enrollment declines that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “I don’t have accurate words to express how important this issue...