Going door-to-door in the Sunland section of the East Valley one evening this past weekend, District 6 School Board candidate Monica Ratliff‘s pitch to voters goes something like this: “Hi, my name is Monica Ratliff. I’m a teacher, and I’m running for the Board of Education. Do you have any questions or concerns about the school district?”...

  The most recent LA Times / USC poll has candidate Eric Garcetti up 7 points over his rival Wendy Greuel in tomorrow’s Mayoral runoff. However, the poll suggests that education is not a very big factor for voters making up their minds — despite all the policy proposals, campaign trail back-and-forth between the candidates, and school...

Governor Jerry Brown continued to promote his Local Control Funding Formula proposal at a Friday morning press conference at East LA’s Humphreys Elementary. Joining him was an All-Star cast that included LA Chamber of Commerce CEO Gary Toebben, United Way CEO Elise Buik, School Board member Bennett Kayser, former State Senator and City Council candidate Gil...

Read between the lines of June Kronholz’s Education Next piece (Still Teaching for America) and you’ll see find lots of interesting tidbits for both Teach For America (TFA) fans and skeptics  — though, alas, nothing specific about TFA LA. The piece takes a look at the much-discussed school reform organization as it goes through a...

So expect school districts to go on a spending binge this summer—Los Angeles Unified School District aims to equip all of its 650,000 students with tablet computers—and then unions in the fall to protest draconian budget cuts and layoffs. – Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal (California’s Shrinking Surplus) Previous posts: Union Focusing on...

Promise Neighborhoods — “a national initiative to end the cycle of intergenerational poverty” — are coming to Los Angeles, thanks to federal funding and a high-scoring application from a consortium of LA education nonprofits led by Youth Policy Institute. The Promise Neighborhoods idea was popularized by Geoffrey Canada’s New York City effort (called the Harlem Children’s...

At last week’s KCRW debate, host Warren Olney asked the two Mayoral candidates who they’d endorsed in the School Board District 6 runoff taking place on Tuesday. Wendy Greuel answered without hesitation: Antonio Sanchez. Eric Garcetti said he had only met with one of the candidates, but was “due to talk to the other one shortly,...

As you may have read in last week’s LA Weekly about School Board member Nury Martinez’s bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, there are surprisingly few women left on the Council thanks in large part to a rivalry between two male-dominated East San Fernando Valley political clans. The rivalry between these two Latino...

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As of May 4, the independent expenditure (IE) committee known as the Coalition for School Reform had a staggering $850,000 left in the bank, according to papers filed with the City Ethics Commission. That dwarfs the $55,000 left in the coffers of the Antonio Sanchez campaign, whom the Coalition is supporting, as well as the $21,000 held by the Monica...