* UPDATED Gov. Jerry Brown‘s proposed state budget for 2015-2016, released today, includes $52 million more in K-12 funding than last year’s budget. The increase, which would bring the state’s K-12 education spending to $47.12 billion, a one-tenth of 1 percent increase over last year, includes more money for Common Core implementation, Internet infrastructure, special education, emergency...

Long time education reform advocate, Caprice Young, is taking over the troubled Magnolia Public Schools charter network, but it won’t be official until a set of test results come in. “I’m waiting to get my tuberculouses results,” she said, laughing on a phone call from her office. “Then I can actually set foot on a...

* UPDATED Magnolia Public Schools, which has fought bitterly with the LA Unified school board to keep several of its schools open, has turned to an old LAUSD hand to take over its leadership. Caprice Young, a long-time education reform advocate and former school board president has been named Magnolia’s new Chief Executive Officer. Young confirmed...

Via San Jose Mercury News | By San Mateo Police Chief Susan E. Manheimer Tucked inside one of last year’s budget trailer bills lies one of the smartest commitments to crime prevention a governor and legislature have ever made, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with prisons or police. What it does is “ensure...

California continued to rank poorly in an annual report that grades how states are educating their students, scoring a total score of D+ and an overall ranking of 42nd in the Education Week’s “Quality Counts” report. Education Week is published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, and its annual report is often cited and...

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today announced that 227 school sites, including 33 in LA Unified, will share nearly $27 million in Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grants (BIIG) to help school districts increase their ability to administer the state’s new online tests this spring. “These state grants provide the critical last step needed to...

The California Arts Council is partnering with the Department of Water Resources in a student poster contest meant to raise awareness about water conservation. Students around the state in the 4th and 5th grade are invited to create posters for the Conservation Creativity Challenge that illustrate fun and unique ways to conserve water as the...

Mayor Eric Garcetti today helped kick off a fund raising campaign for Proyecto Pastoral and Promesa Boyle Heights which will focus efforts on expanding opportunity for youth in our communities. Both groups are non-profits that work to transform the East LA neighborhood by improving targeted schools and expanding social services in the community around them. The...

With an umambiguous victory in the Vergara lawsuit last year, the advocacy group that supported it financially, Students Matter, has developed a blueprint for the new legislature in Sacramento to rewrite the laws struck down by the trial court. Never mind that the case is on appeal by the defendants — the state and its...

Via Los Angeles Times | By Howard Blume  As a three-term Colorado governor, Roy Romer, a Democrat, had to deal with a combative Republican majority in his state Legislature. He later headed his party’s fractious national committee. But nothing was as difficult, he said, as running the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Educating kids in...