Kelly Gonez widened her lead in District 6 and Nick Melvoin narrowed Steve Zimmer’s lead in District 4, according to an updated vote count Tuesday in last week’s LA Unified school board primary. The lineup for the May 16 runoff remains the same. The primary election results aren’t final as LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean...

Local school boards can be prone to blaming their woes on decisions coming out of Sacramento or saying their hands are tied by the California Board of Education. But the state no longer pulls the strings and local districts wield significant power, a California education advocate says. “The days of micromanaging are gone,” said Bill...

The second-largest school district in the country is looking at its unused real estate, closed schools and empty spaces as a potential way to offset an upcoming budget deficit. It seems like an easy solution, but LA Unified officials caution it’s not that simple. “If you are going to look at these assets to sell...

Marshall Tuck, who unsuccessfully ran against State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in 2014, announced Monday he is running for the seat again. Tuck, who lives in Los Angeles, previously led Green Dot Public Schools, a network of independent charter schools, and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a turnaround organization that oversees district schools....

LA Unified’s newest power broker is the guy who finished last. Whomever Gregory Martayan throws his support behind in the District 4 school board runoff could determine the outcome of the key race — and that race has the power to shift the balance of the board overseeing the nation’s second-largest school district. Martayan was...

To keep teachers from being poached across state lines and offset a serious teacher shortage, California lawmakers are looking at a first-ever proposal to exempt educators from state taxes for the next decade. While some states have no income tax, the bill would make California the only state in the nation to allow teachers who...

The Senate voted Wednesday to block Obama administration accountability rules governing how states rate and improve schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The move, which precludes the U.S. Education Department and newly confirmed Secretary Betsy DeVos from issuing any substantially similar regulations, will send even more power back to the states, already retaking the...

* UPDATE Alexandra Mangia joined about three dozen other parents from Los Angeles to ride a bus overnight to speak in Sacramento about the state’s new way to rate schools. In her one-minute speech Wednesday before the state Board of Education, she talked about how shocked she was to discover how low the test scores...

Americans woke Wednesday to morning news broadcasts reporting school closures across the country, prompted by female teachers who took the day off to celebrate International Women’s Day. But many more educators made it to class, using the occasion to teach valuable lessons to their students. The classroom conversations coalesced around celebrating International Women’s Day, as...

Allison Holdorff Polhill, who fell short of making the runoff by about 10,000 votes, said Wednesday the biggest challenges she faced in her campaign were misrepresentations about charter schools and the attempts that were made to align her with Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. “I am woefully disappointed in Steve Zimmer’s...