LA School Report

Over eight hours today, in another tedious LA Unified board meeting, members one-by-one pledged to forge ahead with the district’s ambitious technology program to bridge the digital divide for some of the nation’s poorest students. But for the first time, some board members signaled that the way forward may not include Apple iPads. The meeting...

LA Unified campuses are safer this year with increased security efforts that reflect concerns over school violence, particularly shooters that might make their way on to campus. The district this year has implemented new training and new policies, with an increased number of safety personnel at elementary schools and other campuses. Steve Zipperman, the district’s...

L.A. schools’ iPad initiative could be hard to keep paying for A $1-billion plan to put an iPad into the hands of every Los Angeles student and teacher could prove difficult to sustain financially after about three years, based on figures provided by the L.A. Unified School District. LA Times Will California schools be ready...

As LA Unified continues distributing iPads, the district for the first time is providing cost estimates for continuing the program beyond its current end date, December 2015. And in a presentation planned for tomorrow’s school board meeting, the Common Core Technology Project committee, chaired by board member Monica Ratliff, is also revealing several possibilities for how...

Either as a response to iPad problems or as prelude to the LA Unified School Board’s meeting tomorrow that’s focusing on technology — or maybe both — the district sent around a one-pager last week to set the record straight on the iPad program. It takes the form of “myth busting.” Here is a concise...

State Board executive director optimistic on testing conflict Despite a threatening letter last week from an assistant secretary of the federal Department of Education, the executive director of the State Board of Education is expressing confidence that the state will reach an agreement over standardized testing next spring to avoid tens of millions of dollars...

A new proposed statewide ballot initiative that would allow school districts to fire employees accused of abusing children or selling drugs to children has been submitted for certification and could go before voters a year from now. LA School Report has learned that the initiative, called “Stop Child Molesters, Sexual Abusers, and Drug Dealers from...

What’s the reaction to the Phase 1 rollout of LA Unified’s iPad program? By one very unscientific measure, not so bad. At the request of Monica Ratliff, who chairs the board’s Common Core Technology Committee, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the group representing school principals and assistant principals, surveyed schools among the first 47...