LA School Report

Alex Caputo-Pearl today assumed the office of President of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), a union battling with LA Unified for a larger salary increase than the two percent the district has offered. UTLA remains one of the last of the district’s labor partners to reach agreement on a contract. The teachers had initially asked...

*UPDATED The LA Unified School Board today re-elected Richard Vladovic to serve as president for the 2014-15 school year. Rather than postpone the vote until after the August runoff to fill the vacant District 1 seat, the six member board voted and by a 5-1 margin supported Vladovic’s continued leadership. Tamar Galatzan was the lone...

Today the LA Unified Board of Education will hold three meetings, the first, being their Annual meeting to elect a new president. It is expected, however, that the current president, Richard Vladovic, will win a second term with no contest, as no challengers have stepped forward. The agenda for that meeting is here. Following the...

Final ruling in Vergara could be years in coming Vergara v. California, in which a Superior Court judge struck down California’s teacher tenure, layoff and dismissal laws, may be headed for a lengthy appeals process. A clue to how long may lie in another far-from-resolved education lawsuit. This month marks three years since Alameda County...

SEIU Local 99, which represents school cafeteria workers, custodians, special education assistants, campus safety monitors and other school service workers, has reached a tentative contract agreement with LA Unified that includes an incremental rise to a minimum wage of $15 an hour. The three-year phase in brings workers up to $11 an hour for the coming...

Via New York Times | By Motoko Rich Rebekah and Kevin Nelams moved to their modest brick home in this suburb of Baton Rouge seven years ago because it has one of the top-performing public school districts in the state. But starting this fall, Ms. Nelams plans to home-school the couple’s four elementary-age children. The...

Upstart LA School Report took first place for Best Blog at the 56th annual SoCal LA Press Club awards ceremony yesterday. The winning entry, Why Teachers Teach, Need You Ask? was written by contributor and teacher Ellie Herman,  who spent the past year chronicling the challenges facing teachers in the classroom. Herman also took third...

A Supreme Court ruling today in a case involving home health care providers in Illinois could have a bearing on a California lawsuit involving teachers who object to paying union dues that are used for political purposes. Split along ideological lines with the conservatives prevailing, 5-4, the Court ruled in Harris v. Quinn that “partial...

Not too long ago the iPad train barreling toward LA Unified seemed unstoppable. At the beginning of the school year, it was a given that all district students would have an Apple device in their Millennial and Generation Z hands by the end of 2016. But after a series of very public blunders and intense...