LA School Report

State implements new kindergarten cutoff age Of the panoply of reforms now being implemented in California schools, the one affecting the state’s youngest students passed almost unnoticed this fall. EdSource Title IX decision, a reminder on equality in athletics With an appeals court finding that a California district violated federal discrimination protections, legal experts suggest...

LA Unified high school seniors counting on grant money to attend state colleges and universities got a reprieve today as the district announced a month-long extension for when student grade information needs to be verified for financial aid. Merit-based Cal Grants require that the school district verify a student’s grade point average (GPA), and the...

Time magazine is in hot water with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and other teacher unions over what they say is an unfair and misleading cover. On its Facebook page, UTLA posted a link to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) online petition that calls for Time to “apologize to America’s teachers for the misleading and...

Amid reports that LA Unified staff experts were working through the weekend to determine the cause of errors in some student transcripts, Superintendent Ramon Cortines issued a letter to parents today, ensuring them that issues will be addressed. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the experts were attempting to determine if the problems were...

Via EdSource | By John C. Osborn The race for California state superintendent of public instruction has been fueled by a combined $24 million in total campaign spending for incumbent Tom Torlakson and candidate Marshall Tuck. Outside groups not affiliated with either candidate represent the bulk of that spending – close to $19.4 million on...

With Deasy out, is LA schools’ iPad program ‘dead’? With the departure of John Deasy, the future of the Los Angeles School District’s controversial one-to-one technology program hangs in uncertainty. KPCC LAUSD scrambles to ensure MiSiS doesn’t keep seniors from college Los Angeles Unified’s staff is in a scramble to make sure a computer system doesn’t...

A 400-square foot community garden located on the grounds of a south LA charter school run by Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is celebrating its first harvest with an event tomorrow. The garden, which just opened this school year, is funded by the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) and Citi Foundation. The first City Garden includes...

The battle over the fate of South LA’s Crenshaw High School is now over, but a new documentary film from a UC Santa Cruz grad student takes a fresh and hard-edged look at the bitterness and anger that was unleashed when the LA Unified school board voted to reconstitute the school in 2013. The film,...

ACLU: Jefferson High class scheduling improvement plan may be flawed Attorneys for students who want LA Unified to fix class scheduling problems at Jefferson High say the district’s plan to cure the issues may fall short. KPCC LA Unified gets school lunch makeover in test of locally sourced meals Los Angeles Unified and 14 other...

Barely a week into his job as LA Unified superintendent, Ramon Cortines is pushing back against the school board that hired him, voicing opposition to using any more of the $1.3 billion in bond money to buy digital devices equipped with curriculum for use in classroom instruction. Three times since his first day on the...