LA School Report

The Los Angeles City Clerk’s Office may not announce the final roster of LAUSD Board candidates until as late as December 15, but here are the candidates who are qualified and/or awaiting final approval to run for school board: LA School Report will post the final lineup of LAUSD Board candidates once the City Clerk’s Office...

On Wednesday, the Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $25 million in grants to seven cities where charter schools and districts are working together in new and potentially effective ways.  Though LAUSD was one of the first districts to sign up for the Gates “compact” in December 2010, the district and its charter schools were...

From LA School Report contributor Hillel Aron, writing for the LA Weekly: “On the outskirts of LAUSD’s sprawling, mazelike Educational Service Center in Reseda sit seven long, shabby, peach-colored bungalows with barred windows and rotting wood, which all but scream Southern California public education. “In one of them is a roughly 35-square-foot room where 25 or...

Teachers Endorse Zimmer The union on Wednesday also endorsed candidates for the three school board elections scheduled for March. LA Times 15 Candidates File to Run for LAUSD School Board Seats Officials have 10 days to verify whether each has the signatures of at least 500 registered voters from the candidate’s district. LA Daily News LAUSD...

SEIU Local 99 has endorsed Antonio Sanchez for school board in District 6, which covers the East San Fernando Valley, according to a longtime politico. The endorsement isn’t a huge surprise since Sanchez, a former employee of the LA County Federation of Labor, was always expected to be a union-friendly candidate. In addition to Sanchez, the...

There are lots of charter schools in LA, including some great ones and some not-so-great ones, but don’t think that LA has “more” of them than has become common in big cities around the country. As this new map from a national charter school association shows, lots of other cities have proportionately lots more charters...

As the 2013 race for three LAUSD School Board seats heats up, so will the political fundraising that pays for the candidates’ campaigns. Just as they have in recent elections, independent expenditure (IE) committees are again likely to eclipse direct donations to candidates’ campaigns. At least one IE committee is ahead of the game: UTLA-PACE,...

It was announced last week that Russlynn Ali, the Obama civil rights head within the US Department of Education, was leaving the administration after four years. Longtime LAUSD observers may recall Ali as head of the Education Trust – West and her work on efforts to expand AP access across the district. See EdWeek, Center for Public...

L.A. Unified Says Deal on Evaluations Meets Court Order The Los Angeles Unified School District filed court papers Tuesday asserting that a new tentative agreement with the teachers union has satisfied judicial orders to use state standardized test scores in instructor evaluations. LA Times LAUSD Board OKs Deal With Teachers Union on Performance Evaluations The...

The 50-member UTLA Board of Directors [BOD] has recommended to the union’s House of Representatives that they endorse school board member Steve Zimmer, according to a teacher speaking to LA School Report on condition of anonymity, and it has also recommended that the House of Representatives endorse a handful of acceptable candidates in Districts 2 (Central and East Los...