LA School Report

Working for LA Unified could put you among the nation’s highest wage earners. In closed session Tuesday, the school board approved contracts for senior staff, including five worth more than $200,000 a year, more than twice the salary of the highest-earning teachers in the district. The highest paid official in this round of contracts, according...

There’s bad news for parents whose kids go to schools in the poorest areas of LA Unified. A new report by a coalition of organizations lead by the United Way found that it’s harder for parents and guardians in low-income neighborhoods to obtain school information, get answers to their questions and access parent resources, than it...

Whether LA Unified board member Tamar Galatzan runs for reelection or not, voters in her District 3 will have two other candidates to consider in the 2015 board election. Carl Petersen, Director of Logistics for a Glendale manufacturing company, and Elizabeth Badger, owner of an auto repair company in Canoga Park, have filed to run,...

Via the Los Angeles Times | By Teresa Watanabe In a broad consensus across racial, political and economic lines, most Californians support two historic changes in how academic subjects are taught and state dollars are allocated to schools, according to a statewide survey released Wednesday. More than two-thirds of Californians surveyed support new national learning...

L.A. Unified battles lawyers over Miramonte disclosures The litigation over sexual misconduct at Miramonte Elementary has resulted in a struggle over which documents should be part of the public record. This includes testimony that a former teacher had alerted her principal about sexual misconduct by Mark Berndt, who was subsequently arrested and later convicted of...

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...