LA School Report

Fraud Allegations Swirl Around Firm Run by Two LA Candidates Two would-be candidates for the Los Angeles school board have accused a campaign consulting firm — run by two contenders for city office — of botching their efforts to get on the ballot. LA Times Contested UTLA Panel Elections Signal Internal Fissures Some union members...

Happy holidays, readers. LA School Report will be on a break for the next couple of weeks. See you in the new year!

Two LAUSD School Board candidates — school library aide Franny Parrish and 4LAKids blogger Scott Folsom — say they paid a man named James T. Law to gather signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The City clerk deemed too many of Folsom’s signatures invalid for him to qualify to be a candidate for District 2. As for...

Conventional wisdom is that voter turnout is always relatively low for local elections—especially so for school board races. And this is often true.  In off-year election cycles, when the only offices up for vote are City Council or Board seats, turnout can be as low as 11 percent.  Relatively small numbers of voters can sway...

Los Angeles Gives Students More Control Over School Lunch Many school districts nationwide have stepped up efforts to increase the nutritional value of the food they serve and reduce the consumption of foods that drive a growing childhood obesity epidemic. Los Angeles Unified School District has been at the forefront of this movement. Education News...

Los Angeles-based CItizens of the World charter network has applied to open a school in fast-gentrifying Williamsburg (Brooklyn), and the local NPR affiliate reports that its possible  arrival is creating both hope and concern.  While socioeconomically diverse and progressive charter schools like Citizens are somewhat familiar in Los Angeles, they remain new and unfamiliar on...

In this article, Huffington Post LA editor (and former South Central teacher) Kathleen Miles reminds us that it was the 1989 schoolyard shooting in Stockton that led to an earlier wave of measures to limit the proliferation of assault weapons.

East LA native Monica Garcia only planned on working for LA Unified for three weeks.  That was way back in 2001, when former Board member Jose Huizar asked her to be his first chief of staff. But Garcia, now 44, ended up replacing her boss when he was elected to City Council. The job of...

“There is no reasonable explanation for why firing a teacher in California is such a time-consuming, tortuous and expensive procedure… Appeals often drag on for years — during which the school district must pay the teachers’ salaries and benefits — and almost invariably favor the teachers… The dysfunctional process benefits no one except bad teachers. The...

Former School Board candidate John Fernandez is among a handful of voices urging to teachers to vote against the tentative agreement struck between UTLA and LAUSD regarding teacher evaluations earlier this year. “The big problem is the district and the union have not figured out how much weight they will count for,” said Fernandez, who...