LA School Report

*UPDATED George McKenna’s victory over Alex Johnson last night would appear to return control of the seven member LA Unified school board to teachers union-backed members. McKenna’s win shifts the balance of the board to a majority owing their seats, in large part, to financial support by UTLA and its ability to mobilize members to get...

Fun with numbers: By the LA City Clerk’s unofficial results from last night, George McKenna won with 14,940 votes to 13,153 for Alex Johnson. That translates to $6.79 the McKenna campaign spent for each vote, $101,479 overall, compared with $10.22 that the Johnson campaign paid for each vote, $134,470 overall. Among the independent groups who spent...

Amid a deep split in the black community in south Los Angeles, retired administrator George Mckenna won a seat on the LA Unified school board, fighting back substantial gains made by Alex Johnson a young education aide to County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, in a special election runoff yesterday. Marked by voter low-turnout, the unofficial final...

School leaders oppose Brown’s rainy day measure A coalition of some of the state’s most influential education groups is rallying opposition to a Constitutional amendment placed on the November ballot by the Legislature that would require the state to reconstruct a rainy day fund for use in lean budget years. S&I Cabinet Report California awarded...

George McKenna, a lifelong educator as a teacher, principal, superintendent and administrator, won the runoff election tonight, defeating Alex Johnson to claim the District 1 seat on the LA Unified school board. As the leading vote-getter in the June primary, McKenna, 74, campaigned on his decades of service and with all 324 precincts and mail-in...

UPDATED at 10:55 pm With mail-in ballots and more than three-quarters of the precincts counted, George McKenna had expanded his lead over Alex Johnson — 13,041 votes to 11,827 — for the open LA Unified District 1 board seat. The early totals included 17,483 mail-in ballots as well as results from 247 of the district’s 324 precincts...

Eight months after being yanked off campus, long-time choir director Iris Stevenson returned to Crenshaw High School today. Stevenson, who’s led an award-winning music program at the school for nearly three decades, was pulled from teaching last December and reassigned to report to work at district offices — a sort of purgatory for educators under...

The vacuum is ending today, as polls remain open until 8 p.m. for District 1 voters to select a school board member. It’s been vacant since the death of Marguerite LaMotte in December, and now, either George McKenna or Alex Johnson is going to succeed her. McKenna won the June primary by 20 percentage points,...

School starts again today. Another year of hoped for higher graduation rates, lower dropout rates, higher academic achievement, lower temperatures between district and teacher union officials negotiating a new bargaining agreement. So what’s really new this year in LA Unified? 1. More digital devices are coming. They’re not going to be all iPads. Thanks to...