LA School Report

* UPDATED With a new contract on the line, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is stepping up its attack on Superintendent John Deasy, blaming him for problems large and small and the opening line the district has taken for a new contract with teachers. Union president Alex Caputo-Pearl ratcheted up the tension at the...

Today the LA Unified Board of Education will convene briefly at 10 a.m. before adjourning to a closed session. They will then reconvene at 1 p.m. for an open session, covering a variety of items. For the 10 a.m. board agenda, click here, and for board materials, here. For the 1 p.m. board agenda, click here, board materials,...

* UPDATED A new Field poll shows that the race for state Superintendent of Public Education is tightening. Some might say it’s now nip and tuck. A survey conducted over the last two weeks in August of 467 people who said they were likely to vote in November found that the incumbent, Marshall Tuck, a former...

Questions persist over troubled iPad deployment in LA schools With the huge purchase plan suspended, Superintendent John Deasy has alternated between assertions of his acceptance of the slowdown as a chance to regroup and denunciations of others who he said had politicized the process. Government Technology Universal preschool spending draws wide support in national poll...

The LA Unified School Board returns tomorrow with a full agenda although a lot of the juicy stuff will be discussed in closed session. In addition to the usual topics — personnel issues and ongoing litigation — the board will review labor negotiations, which at this point is down to the on-going talks with the...

Via EdWeek | by Carl Finer As a veteran urban educator and career union member, I care deeply about both my students and building the systems to ensure that all students and teachers have what they need to be successful. In the legal precedent laid out in the controversial Vergara decision relating to teacher tenure...

Principal Steven Martinez of John Burroughs Middle School in Hancock Park figured the worst that could happen is that his school’s new iPads wouldn’t connect to the Apple TVs that staff bought to enhance lesson plans. He figured wrong. On Friday, he learned that his school is not getting iPads at all. “I don’t understand what’s...

LAUSD teachers are paid less than others in California Records obtained by the Daily News show that those LA teachers averaged $2,148 — about 3 percent — less in pay than peers at a majority of California schools last year. LA Daily News Why don’t more men go into teaching? Analysis: Across the country, teaching...

Governor Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, spent a few testy minutes in their debate last night talking about public education. Their exchange largely focused on the recent decision by Brown, as a loser in Vergara vs. California, to appeal the ruling, which struck down laws protecting teacher employment rights. Brown was asked...

Ryan Smith, whose work as Director of Education Programs and Policy for United Way of Greater Los Angeles helped improve the educational prospects for students of color and those living in poverty, is leaving his post to become executive director of Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based non-profit focused on many of the same objectives. In his...