District 4 challenger Kate Anderson has Eva Longoria.  District 4 incumbent Steve Zimmer has John Lithgow.  Now, District 2 incumbent Monica Garcia has singer John Legend.

The front section of today’s New York Times includes a big story about the primary day voting for LAUSD School Board that’s going to take place tomorrow. The piece notes that protecting the efforts of Superintendent John Deasy has become a rallying cry for reform advocates such as the Coalition for School Reform, while the...

In a tall office building overlooking Olympic Boulevard, a group of more than a dozen volunteers sat in a circle in a conference room being trained on how to best reach voters on the phone and in the field. One of the keys to the Coalition’s new field campaign is to send volunteers out into...

On Friday, former LAUSD Board Members Yolie Flores and Marlene Canter weighed in with an oped in the LA Daily News:  “When people with no vested, personal interest in the outcome try to help elect reform-minded candidates, they are branded as “outsiders” who are trying to “buy elections.”… Yet, when “insiders” who do have a...

With only three days to go before the March 5 election, School Board candidates are hitting the pavement all over Los Angeles this weekend, hunting for votes. But judging from their campaign websites, some are more active than others. In downtown’s District 2, School Board President Monica Garcia is asking volunteers to sign up for...

Take a breather from all the campaign coverage to check out this much-discussed video from this week’s TED talks down in Long Beach: There’s also a a post about it from The Atlantic (Do Kids Really Need Teachers?).

Mailers, television ads, and phone banking have become increasingly negative the closer it’s gotten to the March 5 primary day. Click through the gallery below for a roundup of some of the lowest blows against the candidates in these contentious races:

How quickly we forget. For all the spending on this year’s School Board races —  which have already hit a record $3.8 million in outside expenditures — spending on the 2007 race was even higher at this point. Six years ago — the last time there was a showdown between UTLA and allies of Mayor...

Click here to listen to a half-hour discussion with District 4 competitors Steve Sanchez and Kate Anderson on KPCC yesterday afternoon. Towards the end of the discussion, Zimmer makes the case that School Board seats shouldn’t be bought by outside interests, and Anderson points out that she’s done a ton of her own independent fundraising.

Predicting the outcome of any political campaign is notoriously difficult — and predicting closely contested School Board races may be especially so. The turnout is generally low, and the polling is weak.  The majority of voters tend to make up their mind while they’re looking at the ballot, and forget who they’ve voted for 10...