SEIU Local 99 has a new leader to steer the union’s 45,000 LA Unified employee membership. Max Arias has been named Executive Director starting Feb 16. He is replacing Scott Washburn who has been serving as interim executive director since July, 2014. The union represents teachers assistants, custodians, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers among other service positions....

Let the negative campaigning begin! An arm of the California Charter Schools Association‘s political action committee has unleashed the first campaign attack with a full color, glossy flyer aimed at District 5 board incumbent Bennett Kayser. The message targets a very specific demographic: Latinos. It features five sad looking brown-skinned kids with their heads in their...

The slow pace of negotiations between LA Unified and the teachers union, UTLA, continued yesterday, with the district proposing new language on employee evaluations, transfers and early retirement incentives and no counter-offers this time from the union on those issues or anything else. That leaves the talks about where they’ve been, with all 12unresolved issues...

Via The New York Times | By Susan Pinker  President Obama’s domestic agenda, which he announced in his State of the Union address this month, has a lot to like: health care, maternity leave, affordable college. But there was one thing he got wrong. As part of his promise to educate American children for an...

* UPDATED If endorsements mean anything, the incumbents running to hold their LA Unified board seats have gotten a boost from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for more than 300 locals, representing about 600,000 workers. The group is supporting George McKenna in District 1, Tamar Galatzan in 3, Bennett...

It was supposed to be the first debate of the LA Unified school board races, but it wasn’t: Only one candidate showed up. With board member Bennett Kayser and challenger Andrew Thomas pulling out, the floor for the District 5 forum belonged to candidate Ref Rodriguez, who had all the time he liked last night to...

The Associated Administrators of Los Angeles and LA Unified reached an agreement last week to consolidate two positions into one. The role of “assistant principal” and “instructional specialist” as of July 1 will be merged into the role of “assistant principal elementary” or “assistant principal secondary.” The change was explained by AALA in its weekly...

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a charter group in LA Unified, said today Dan Katzir will join the organization in March as CEO and President. He replaces Alliance’s founding CEO, Judy Burton, a former LA Unified associate superintendent of innovation and instruction, who returned to the district last month to serve as chair of what is...

Hours after criticizing LA Unified School Board Member Bennett Kayser for dropping out of today’s District 5 campaign forum, one of his challengers, Andrew Thomas, announced that he, too, is pulling out. That leaves the stage to the only other candidate in the race, Ref Rodriguez, who is promising to attend. The forum is the...

UTLA, the teachers union, is helping raise money for the family of a 14-year-old boy who was killed outside Griffith Middle School in east LA last week. The family is seeking donations to help pay for his funeral expenses and remains short of the $15,000 needed as of today. Steven Cruz, a student at nearby Garfield High...