George McKenna is going into his 55th year as an educator, and he has a lot to say about it. In fact, he declares: “Give me a school that’s supposedly poor-performing for three years and I guarantee you no charter school would be able to snatch any kids from that school, and no kids will...

George McKenna is often considered one of the more curmudgeonly characters on the LA Unified school board (although he has some competition). As vice president of the board and the senior member of the seven elected members, McKenna is given a lot of leeway and respect when he has something to say at the board...

Despite the LA Unified school board reversing itself and denying El Camino Real High School’s attempts to develop two long-closed elementary school campuses in the west San Fernando Valley, the leader of the CHIME Institute told LA School Report he is not concerned the board will shut down his school’s plan to develop another closed campus in the...

The 46 new classrooms installed when two schools were temporarily relocated because of the Porter Ranch gas leak will be taken down once the students go back to their former locations. The district spent $5 million in building the temporary classrooms that are equipped with heat and air conditioning and required plumbing, wiring, utility poles, paving...

LA Unified posted a 92 percent decrease in the number of days lost to suspensions as a result of its Restorative Justice program and the district’s new approach to discipline. In the 2007-2008 school year, a total of 74,765 days were lost to suspensions, but that number plummeted to 6,221 in the 2014-2015 school year, according to a...

By Jeremy Loudenback As director of the School Mental Health unit at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Pia Escudero supervises more than 300 psychiatric social workers, clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals. She has also worked to create trauma-informed systems and therapeutic approaches in schools. Escudero was part of a team that helped...

The word “MiSiS” is not generally associated with happy endings at LA Unified, and neither is the district’s increasingly competitive relationship with its 221 independent charter schools, but that was the case earlier this month when the district and its charters announced they had reached an agreement on linking their student data systems to fulfill...

UPDATED * It’s official. Monica Garcia announced Tuesday to her supporters that she will be running to retain her seat on LA Unified’s school board. Meanwhile, fellow board member Monica Ratliff surprised many education and City Hall watchers last week when she quietly took out papers with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission to allow her to run for the...

A new report that analyzed how effective schools and cities are at closing the “achievement gap” between students from low-income families and their more advantaged peers found that nine of the top 10 schools in Los Angeles were independent charter schools. The first-of-its-kind Education Equality Index from Education Cities studied data from schools in the 100...

Members of the LA Unified School Board and the Los Angeles City Council joined last week with after-school program supporters, families and students to call for an increase in state funds. About 75 people gathered Friday outside L.A. City Hall in support of a resolution authored by City Council member David Ryu, chair of the...