LA School Report

Gov. Jerry Brown had a few words to say about public education in his State of the State address today. In effect, he saluted his effort to return more control over spending to the state’s school districts. Here’s what he had to say: “Last year, I spoke of the principle of subsidiarity, a rather clunky...

With the passing of the LA Unified school board’s “Good Food” resolution in December, a number of giant vendors the district does business with will be forced to change their practices or lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts. Tyson Foods in particular, which supplies much of the district’s chicken in a five-year $754...

As negotiations between LA Unified and its teachers union, UTLA, stumble along with still a wide gap on salaries, two Bay Area school districts, have made significant progress in their own deals with teachers. San Francisco teachers have agreed to a double-digit raise over three years while Oakland teachers are in line to get at...

EdWatch 2015: 10 issues to watch 2015 promises to be a pivotal year for several major reforms in public education. Ed Source Wi-Fi-enabled bus connects students in poor Calif. community The school bus Wi-Fi program started this fall is one example of how a poor and underserved community is trying to help students get better...

SEIU Local 99, one of LA Unified’s largest and most powerful labor partners, announced today it is backing all of the incumbents running for a district school board seat in 2015. After a town hall meeting for their members, the union representing nearly 40,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers and special education assistance, among others, made...

LA Unified sustained another legal blow this week in a “whistleblower” case that’ll cost the district millions. After nearly a month-long trial, a Los Angeles jury awarded retired Air Force Officer and Junior ROTC instructor, Archie Roundtree, $3.3 million, finding that the district had revoked his teaching certification in an act of retaliation. This latest...

A small but loud group from The Labor Community Strategy Center’s Fight for the Soul of the Cities and Community Rights Campaign protested outside of LA Unified headquarters yesterday, demanding that the LA School Police Department give up any military weapons it received through the Pentagon’s controversial 1033 Program. Check out the attached video for highlights...

A bargaining update from LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines yesterday to district employees may prove ominous for the teachers union, UTLA, and ultimately the district’s 650,000 students. In his three-page review of negotiations so far, Cortines concedes that all workers “deserve additional salary increases, particularly in view of the recent past years of salary freezes...

* UPDATED As LA School Report prepares to shut down for the year — and gear up for a long holiday Tamale Fest and Eggnog-a-thon — we’d like to take a moment to look ahead at the big stories awaiting us in 2015. So grab your snow globe, give it a good shake and look into...