Fresh off a controversial April 2012 renewal, the El Sereno charter school called Academia Semillas has refused to comply with an LAUSD audit, according to this December 2012 report by the Office of the Inspector General. “Repeated attempts to obtain this information from the school were unsuccessful and the school chose to communicate to the OIG exclusively through...

Tuesday’s Board meeting began with a moment of silence for the victims and survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing and the memory of teacher and activist Sal Castro. During the following hours came several key decisions including the unanimous passage of Board member Tamar Galatzan’s resolution to streamline teacher misconduct investigations and the unanimous renewal for...

While LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy says that a federal waiver from the law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) could free up $80 million for student and teacher support services for the district — without reducing school accountability — and the Obama Administration has begun reviewing the LAUSD waiver request, state education officials and...

Follow LA School Report‘s Hillel Aron, who is livetweeting from the School Board Meeting: [widgets_on_pages id=”Twitter Live Posts”]

The agenda for today’s School Board meeting is packed with hot-topic resolutions, including a plan to streamline LAUSD’s teacher misconduct investigation process, a call to work with state legislators to pass a new teacher dismissal bill, and a plan to reduce student suspensions and discipline for “willful defiance” in LA schools. These topics have received...

Days after LA teachers handed John Deasy a symbolic vote of no confidence, mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel reaffirmed her support for the divisive Superintendent. “In the last two years since John Deasy took over the school district, we have seen test scores skyrocket, graduation rates grow and drop out rates shrink,” Greuel said in an emailed...

Voters head to the polls in less than six weeks to decide the East San Fernando Valley District 6 School Board runoff between Antonio Sanchez and Monica Ratliff, but things are off to a pretty slow start when it comes to fundraising and spending. In terms of direct campaign fundraising, Ratliff hasn’t raised any money at all...

Over the weekend, the California Democratic Convention declined to provide exhibition space to Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst or her husband’s Stand Up nonprofit (citing space constraints), gave CTA president Dean Vogel time to deliver this fiery anti-reform speech, and passed this anti-reform resolution. Via LA Times and CTA blog.

The Sacramento-based school advocacy group StudentsFirst recently hired Fabian Nunez in an effort to beef up its advocacy efforts in California. In a telephone interview last week, Nunez gave LA School Report his take on education politics in Sacramento, recent shifts in union priorities after last year’s controversial debate over teacher dismissals, and his vision for higher-performing...

After the symbolic “no confidence” vote by the Los Angeles teachers union last week, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy gave the LA Daily News his thoughts and described his plans to bring “youth rights” to all students in LA schools: Watch and read the full Deasy interview at LA Daily News; read LA School Report’s coverage of UTLA’s vote here.