By Keith Sharon The bigger boys surrounded him near the bus stop at Kettler Elementary School in Huntington Beach. They screamed an anti-gay slur at him in Spanish. They sashayed as they circled him, mocking his effeminate movements. Marcos Saldivar didn’t know what the slur meant exactly. He only knew that it hurt. He was...

Things are getting nasty in what had been a relatively quiet and peaceful race for the LA Unified school board seat in District 7. Candidate Lydia Gutierrez, who is challenging incumbent and board President Richard Vladovic, responded sharply to several campaign flyers circulated by the political action committee for SEIU Local 99, a union of...

With expectations of a windfall from the state when Gov. Jerry Brown announces his updated budget tomorrow, various interests in LA Unified are eager to learn if the added dollars will reach them. It’s not likely. Despite the possibility that the district’s cut of the added revenues could reach $300 million or more, Superintendent Ramon...

* UPDATED Superintendent Ramon Cortines is putting off retirement for another year. The LA Unified school board yesterday voted unanimously to extend Cortines’s contract through the end of the 2015-16 school year. Terms of the deal are still under review, “but nothing, including salary, was expected to change from the previous pact,” district officials said...

In a surprise move today, the LA Unified School Board postponed a vote on a resolution to fix the implementation of college prep graduation requirements, called A through G. The resolution co-sponsored by board members Mónica García and Steve Zimmer was delayed after members complained that they didn’t have enough understanding of the latest amended version...

The LA Unified school board is scheduled to meet today at 1 p.m. Among the agenda items of interest is a vote on a new contract with UTLA, as well as discussion on the district’s A through G graduation requirements. Also included is the “Seek Greater Opportunities for Four Year Olds,” a plan to expand Transitional Kindergarten to...

As the LA Unified school board today prepares to debate fixes to its implementation of college prep graduation requirements, hundreds of people are expected to rally outside the district’s downtown headquarters in favor of the proposal. The rally is scheduled for 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., roughly the same time the board is expected to...

Just as LA Unified is planning big cuts to a preschool program, a new report that says California is lagging behind other states in the quality of its early education programs. The annual report, The State of Preschool 2014, was prepared by the National Institute for Early Education Research and focuses on 10 quality preschool standards...

By Chris Megerian  As California staggered through years of budget crises, the state law intended to safeguard funds for public education was no defense against a flood of recessionary red ink. School budgets were cut by billions of dollars, and thousands of teachers were laid off. So it’s an incredible reversal of fortune that the...

Big Picture High School, a charter school attended by mostly troubled teens, will likely be shut down in June after a review by the LA Unified Charter Schools Division reported that it is dissatisfied with the school’s, um, big picture. The school board tomorrow is considering turning down its request to stay in operation. The...