The Los Angeles police department is moving toward charging celebrated teacher Rafe Esquith with one count of inappropriate touching of a juvenile, LA School Report has learned. The single charge could come within a few weeks after being reviewed by the city attorney and U.S. district attorney’s offices, said LAPD Captain Julian Melendez, head of the...

By James King and Gilad Shiloach ISIS supporters took to social media to gloat about the disruption caused by “credible” bomb threats made against the Los Angeles school system on Tuesday. The threats closed more than 900 schools across the city, abruptly sending hundreds of thousands of students home and throwing the city into disarray. Within minutes...

The LA Unified school board is drawing closer to the end of the search for a new with another closed door meeting scheduled for tomorrow, just after a special open session to discuss the on-going gas leak affecting two nearby schools in the Valley. The board is considering a move to declare emergency conditions at Porter Ranch Community...

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Los Angeles) issued a statement today that released more details from the email threat that closed all of LA Unified schools yesterday. He also explained why authorities in Los Angeles and New York ultimately reached the same conclusion, that the threat was not credible. The full wording of the email has not yet...

UPDATED After a long tense day that resulted in all LA Unified schools being closed due to a bomb and weapons threat, normal routines came back to schools across the district this morning. “Things have gone extraordinarily smoothly,” board President Steve Zimmer told LA School Report. “It’s as close to normal as possible. Even so,...

By Adam Nagourney, Richard Pérez-Peña and J. David Goodman The nation’s two largest school systems confronted threats of a terrorist attack on Tuesday and reacted in sharply different ways: New York City reviewed the warning and dismissed it as a hoax, but officials here abruptly shut down all public schools, upending the lives of parents, students...

LA Unified officials said tonight that all district schools have been declared safe and will reopen tomorrow. The decision was made after law enforcement officials determined that an email foretelling violent acts across the district was judged to be “not a credible threat” by investigators, in the words of Mayor Eric Garretti, who joined city...

Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City, has “zero periods,” when students with electives go to classes before school begins. When teachers arrived at the school early today to prepare for their regular class time, they were greeted by their colleagues saying, “Leave the school, we’re on Level 1 alert. This is serious!” Minutes before...

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made it very clear: He didn’t close the schools. Neither did the police chief, nor the county sheriff. That decision was made by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who was supposed to be on his way to retirement this week. “I made the decision to close the schools,” Cortines said...