LA School Report

Barbara Torres, president of SEIU Local 99, the local school workers union with 45,000 members, is raising alarms within the union over her intention to run for an LA Unified school board seat. The potential conflict is over her role as a member of the union’s bargaining committee, which is negotiating a new labor contract...

Despite being the nation’s largest state, with the second-largest school district in the country, California placed only one school in The U.S. News and World latest rankings of public high schools, Oxford Academy near Anaheim, made it to the No. 10 spot. The highest ranked school in LA Unified, the nation’s No. 2 district to New...

Via Politico | By Josh Gerstein The Supreme Court’s decision upholding Michigan’s affirmative-action ban was far from a shock, but it generated considerable strife on the high court, producing five different opinions in which the justices traded charges and countercharges on the polarizing issues at stake. Tuesday’s splintered, 6-2, ruling continued what appears to be...

Lawmakers reject Brown’s online learning proposal A key budget panel on Tuesday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest plan to revamp the K-12 independent study program and create more opportunities for students to use modern technology as part of their academic day. The Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance also held off on endorsing Brown’s proposed...

In another sign of improving financial fortunes for LA Unified, the school board today approved multi-year contracts for many of the district’s most senior staff. In a break from previous years, when high level administration staffers worked on one-year contracts, several of Superintendent John Deasy’s most senior aides were given contracts of two and, in...

Despite hearing assurances that there are no longer fiscal mismanagement problems at Charter High School of Arts – Multimedia and Performing, better known as CHAMPS, the LA Unified school board voted unanimously today to issue a Notice of Violations, usually the first step in revoking a charter. At issue is how the school responded to an...

Music is returning to LA Unified, at least in some schools, thanks to a grant from the SoCal Acura Dealers Association and EcoMedia, a company that helps provide financial support for underfunded projects. The grant, totaling $33,600, will help national nonprofit Little Kids Rock to expand its music education programming to more than 8,400 music...

Beginning today, LA School Report is taking a longer look at each of the seven candidates running for LA Unified’s vacant South LA, District 1 board seat. The series starts today with Rachel Johnson and will continue over the weeks ahead. After three decades as a LAUSD elementary school teacher and nine years as a...

Delegates of the LA County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, which represents 600,000 workers in the Los Angeles area, decided last night not to endorse any of the seven candidates for LA Unified school board after a motion to endorse candidate Alex Johnson failed to carry a required two-thirds majority vote. The decision mirrors that of...

This morning, the Los Angeles Unified School Board meets at 9 a.m. with an agenda that includes a discussion about the future of CHAMPS, a charter high school which has recently been under investigation on allegations an employee misused school funds. Other items include a resolution by school board members Bennett Kayser and Monica Ratliff...