LA School Report

At an education conference in Burlingame earlier today, Obama education secretary Arne Duncan gave a muddled semi-endorsement of the controversial parent trigger law in California. Specifically, Duncan described the trigger as “an important tool” for parent involvement — but not the only or even the most important one. Duncan’s answer — which closely resembles the...

In a statement released Tuesday morning, United Teachers Los Angeles softened its tone on Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), a program in almost 10,000 LAUSD classrooms that feeds low-income students free breakfast at their desks in the morning. The union’s announcement followed a Monday night LA Times story that said a majority of School Board...

Here’s the full text of the memo LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy sent School Board members last week about eight controversial budget items including the classroom breakfast initiative: Read the full LA School Report story here.

The Coalition for School Reform has already spent nearly $200,000 since the March 5th primary to support Antonio Sanchez‘s bid to replace Nury Martinez as District 6 Board Member. With around $1 million left in the bank thanks to recent donations by former Mayor Richard Riordan ($50,000), New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($350,000), and philanthropist /...

Parents Rally to Save Classroom Breakfasts Union officials representing school cafeteria workers led a noisy rally of parents Tuesday to save a Los Angeles Unified classroom breakfast program that feeds nearly 200,000 children but was in danger of being axed after sharp criticism by teachers. Los Angeles Times See also: LA Daily News, CBS LAUSD...

There are lots of LA education folks up in Burlingame today at the NewSchools Venture Fund education summit, a one-day edtech/school reform confab. So far I’ve spotted Marco Petruzzi (Green Dot), Steve Barr (Future Is Now), and Stephanie Germeraad (Broad Center). Click here to check out the details, panels, speakers, and sponsors, or follow the...

This is a guest commentary from longtime journalist Richard Lee Colvin comparing the current debate over the leadership of LAUSD to a similar one that took place nearly a decade ago in San Diego: School board elections typically are low-cost, low-turnout, low-visibility exercises in democracy. But, in this one, philanthropists and other moneyed interests spent...

The May 14 School Board meeting two weeks from today is shaping up to be a blockbuster event featuring mass demonstrations by two unions and a host of conflict-laden issues for the Board to decide on. The teachers union has promised to hold a large rally demanding that LAUSD hire more teachers, nurses and librarians....

In a recent Which Way L.A. segment, host Warren Olney discusses the battle brewing in Sacramento over Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach to education budget reform. Brown’s plan to give struggling school districts like LAUSD, which have higher numbers of low-income and English language learner students, higher funding than more successful districts, has divided Democrats in...

Apparently not content with its recent poll on LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s performance, UTLA is now embarking on a “Superintendent Performance Review” that calls on teachers to review Deasy’s work. The union’s announcement of the new Deasy survey appears somewhat more neutral than it was for the last survey, which indicated what the union thought...