By Sarah Tulley When the nation’s top teachers were asked about the biggest barriers to students’ success, most didn’t point to reasons inside the classroom. Instead, they ranked family stress and poverty as the main issues facing students. The Council of Chief State School Officers and Scholastic Inc. sent surveys to the 56 winners of Teacher of...

Get ready for some pomp, circumstance — and politics. The first half of tomorrow’s LA Unified school board meeting, starting at 10 am, will be a swearing in ceremony for four newly elected board members by people or, in some cases, groups of people, of their choice. Scott Schmerelson, Ref Rodriguez, George McKenna and Richard...

Outgoing Los Angeles City Council member Tom LaBonge now has a square named after him in front of the school he graduated from, John Marshall High School. The plaque also names the other public schools that LaBonge attended locally, including Ivanhoe Elementary School in 1963 and Thomas Starr King Middle School in 1968. The councilman,...

* UPDATED Ref Rodriguez is in the market for new friends. Specifically, friends on the LA Unified school board, which he’ll officially join tomorrow for a five-year term ending in 2020. “I know I need to build some relationships with certain communities that may not trust me because of the campaign,” he told LA School...

The Supreme Court announced today it will hear a case that could deal a major blow to the financial power of public sector unions. The case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, involves 10 California teachers who say their being forced to pay union dues violates their right to free speech. The teachers are asking the...

By Robin Abcarian  Despite all the noise around mandating vaccinations for schoolchildren, most California adults — some 67 percent, according to a recent poll — think it’s a good idea. We will soon know whether Gov. Jerry Brown agrees. On Monday, the Legislature sent him a bill that would end the personal belief exemption, a routinely abused loophole that has seriously...

* UPDATED LA Unified elementary school teacher David Goldberg has been elected as secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Association. Goldberg, 43, spent most of his 19 years at Murchison Elementary, where he is a bilingual teacher who is fluent in Spanish and American Sign Language. He was one of dozens of educators who spent a night in...

Los Angeles’ schools are alive with the sound of music, or at least, they will be come fall when LA Unified’s new-and-improved arts budget is put into practice. Last week, the school board approved the district’s 2015-2016 spending plan, which allocates $26.5 million to arts education, said Rory Pullens, executive director of arts education for the...

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board Despite broad bipartisan support, legislation to repeal an onerous cap on school district reserve funds didn’t have much of a chance in the Democrat-controlled California Legislature. The bill by Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-San Ramon) died in the Assembly Education Committee faster than you can say “opposed by the...

OK, so let’s play this out. One of the Mónicas — Ratliff or García, or maybe both — offers a resolution next week waiving the rule that sets term limits at two, enabling Richard Vladovic to serve a third one-year term as the LA Unified board president. The effort needs four votes to pass. How do...