A former LA Unified teacher is suing the district for $12 million, claiming it failed to protect her from abuse, harassment and discrimination because she is a lesbian. Cathy Figel taught physical education at Marina del Rey Middle School for 13 years and claims to have endured anti-gay language, anti-gay graffiti scrawled in her work area; exclusion from...

A group of college students told the LA Unified board this week that its effort to reach non-Internet-connected people as part of the superintendent search was inadequate. “We walked through neighborhoods and found more than 200 community members who lacked Internet access and didn’t have a means of travel to the community meetings, but care about education...

By Elizabeth Aguilera The McDonald’s on Whittier Boulevard in Boyle Heights is jammed on a recent weeknight. Outside, a bright yellow poster welcomes customers to “McTeacher Night.” It’s a fundraiser that funnels a portion of the evening’s proceeds to nearby Stevenson Middle School. Behind the counter, teachers watch over the French fryer and assemble orders onto trays....

In what appears to be a strategy to undermine the Broad Foundation’s proposal to move half of district students into charter schools, LA Unified board member Mónica Ratliff is exploring the possibility of turning the entire district into a charter organization. Part of the agenda of the Nov. 17 meeting of the district’s Budget, Facilities and...

Los Angles Mayor Eric Garcetti today announced a new program that will help identify students in LA Unified whose parents are veterans or active-duty service members so that they can receive extra resources available to them. Joining Garcetti at Leland Elementary School in San Pedro, where he announced the new program, were LA Unified school board...

As many as 200 parents, teachers and students are expected to attend a community forum, starting at 5 p.m. today at Santee High School, to provide input into the LAUSD superintendent search. The meeting was scheduled to reach people that the organizers say weren’t included in the search firm’s recent compilation profile from surveys and other community...

By The Los Angeles Daily News Editorial Board Before school board members decide who they want to be Los Angeles Unified’s next superintendent, they must agree on what they want. That won’t be easy. But it’s vital. If they don’t come to a consensus soon about the qualities they’re looking for in an L.A. schools...

On Dec. 1 it will be a year since FBI agents showed up at LA Unified’s headquarters with a federal grand jury subpoena and carted off 20 boxes of documents related to the district’s controversial iPad program. Since that day little if any new information has been publicly revealed about the investigation’s status, and that...

The LA Unified School Board convened at 10 a.m. and didn’t adjourn until more than 12 hours later yesterday, in a series of meetings that ran the gamut from moving forward on finding a new superintendent, to confronting ugly budget realities to diving into the minutiae of charter school applications. For background information, each member...

An independent Financial Review Panel yesterday detailed drastic measures that LA Unified must take to remain afloat in what school board President Steve Zimmer calls a “perfect storm” of financial trouble for the district. “There’s a fiscal cliff that is immediate if different decisions are not made,” warned Bill Lockyer, the former California attorney general and...