Mark it on your calender: Important voter registration and vote-by-mail deadlines are coming up for Los Angeles’ May 21 runoff election for the District 6 seat on the LAUSD School Board: May 6, 2013 (Monday): The last day to register to vote in the May runoff election. (If you still haven’t registered, go here to register to vote...

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has expressed great enthusiasm for the 10-district effort to win a so-called “waiver” from some aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which sets accountability rules and governs the distribution of billions in education funding from Washington.  California State Board of Education members recently voted in support of the effort,...

On Friday, LAUSD sent out an announcement about the new teacher evaluation program that the district and the teachers union agreed to earlier this year, clarifying its position on the use of student achievement data. Now, UTLA is denouncing the district memo for “attempt[ing] to discredit UTLA’s internal materials to our membership while also continuing...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is likely to be remembered for his efforts on behalf of public education in Los Angeles. But will he be considered effective and successful or not? The initial verdicts are starting to come in, and they are predictably mixed. On Tuesday, KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez produced a generally negative view of the Mayor’s accomplishments,...

Insiders who spoke with LA School Report over the past few days generally rejected criticisms aimed by some outside observers at the Coalition for School Reform-funded campaign to elect a slate of reform-minded candidates to the LAUSD School Board. “Because Kate [Anderson] lost, every single thing [the Coalition] did looks wrong,” said one insider who — like...

In a dramatic move that may be a sign of larger changes to come, the LAUSD School Board voted Tuesday afternoon to limit the term of the Board President to two consecutive one-year terms*. The swing vote in the 4-3 decision was none other than recently re-elected Board member Steve Zimmer, who had supported Board...

The LAUSD Board voted today, 4 to 3, to limit the School Board president’s term to two years per individual. This will end Monica Garcia’s role as the Board’s president, a seat she has held for six consecutive years. Board member Steve Zimmer was the deciding vote, joining his colleagues Marguerite LaMotte, Bennett Kayser, and...

The teachers union’s on-again, off-again plan to survey its members on what they think about LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s job performance is back on again. However, this time around the union has a much stronger idea of what kinds of negative views its members should express. The union first mentioned in January that it planned...

Want to know what’s happening at today’s LAUSD Board meeting as it happens? Follow LA School Report’s Hillel Aron here, who is livetweeting from the School Board Meeting: [widgets_on_pages id=”Twitter Live Posts”]

Ama Nyamekye, the executive director of Educators 4 Excellence Los Angeles, an organization that advocates for teachers to take a more active role in shaping education policies, wrote an op-ed in last week’s Huffington Post LA calling for a more “courageous” LAUSD School Board: “Our school board needs to get to work tackling a tall order of...