LA School Report

The LA Unified school board has an unusually long agenda for its monthly meeting on Tuesday, 39 items plus a handful of reports and updates. Each has consequences but few of them carry the import and emotional impact of Steve Zimmer‘s proposal to fill the vacant seat for District 1 on a temporary basis until...

LA schools’ drop in arts teachers dragged down county numbers The Los Angeles Unified School District has lost about 200 full-time arts teacher positions since the 2010-2011 school year, according to the most recent data available from the California Department of Education, suggesting the district is responsible for more than half of the loss cited...

The LA Unified school board on Tuesday is expected to approve a list of proposed responsibilities and job qualifications for a temporary, non-voting board member to fill the seat of Marguerite LaMotte, who died in December. The recommendations grew out of a meeting this week chaired by Steve Zimmer, the most vocal school board member to support installing an interim...

In an abbreviated day of testimony in the trial Vergara v. CA, a suit that is challenging teacher dismissal laws in California, Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu heard from two witnesses who described their personal disappointments with California’s public education system and the laws regulating teacher employment. Testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs, Kareem Weaver,...

Some LA Unified schools may be moving closer to allowing students to take district-bought iPads home again, and that has caught district officials by surprise. The district put an end to the practice in September after students figured out how to bypass the device’s security filters. But school board member Monica Ratliff, chair of the...

L.A. school officials barred from access to curriculum for iPads Los Angeles school officials have failed for now in their efforts to get full access to a digital curriculum that the school system purchased in June. The curriculum, developed by Pearson for use on district iPads, is off-limits because Pearson is likely to bid on...

The latest IRS tax filing for UTLA, the nation’s second largest teachers union, was made public this week on its website, providing a look into the financial health of the powerful union. For the year ending August, 2012 (the most recent available), the union reported a 2.5 percent drop in total revenue, and a 4...

With new education tax dollars coming in, LAUSD is quickly assembling a 47-member Parent Advisory Committee as part of its Local Control Accountability Plan, which represents the district’s spending priorities. For parents there’s a two-step process for participating. A local School Site Council identifies interested parents as  potential candidates. Then each council nominates one parent of a “low...