Despite threats by LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines to withhold wages, the teachers union, UTLA, is urging teachers to boycott faculty meetings tomorrow at schools across the district. “The Superintendent has threatened to dock the pay of employees who participate.  We know what we are doing is right, and this scare tactic will not stop...

As LA Unified is currently laying off hundreds of teachers and other employees to deal with a looming budget crisis, there is perhaps one piece of good news for any teacher getting a pink slip: it has become an “employees’ market” for teachers in the state. Due to a growing shortage, many large districts are...

The details of a lawsuit filed last week were shocking: a teacher at Paul Revere Charter Middle School and Magnet Center in Brentwood allegedly used offensive racial slurs in class, and said that black people were not smart. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a mixed-race student at the school and led to the removal the teacher,...

The release of salary records for all LA Unified employees by the Los Angeles Daily News on Friday produced a list of the district’s highest paid officials in 2014, with one apparent anomaly: an elementary school teacher. While nine of the top ten earners are headquarters administrators, starting with former Superintendent John Deasy, who made $439,998 the year...

By Joshua Leibner | Salon Michelle Pierson, a 40-ish mother of two, is in a state of confusion over her direction in life and finds herself wandering down the main drag of her gentrifying, hip Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood. She hears a confident voice coming from Eagle Rock City Hall that entices her in. Inside,...

Yet again, LA Unified finds itself in the soup because of a computer malfunction. Friends of Stoner, a group fighting to block the co-location of another charter school at Stoner Avenue Elementary in Palms, has met with lawyers to discuss legal options against LA Unified for extending the application deadline by three days. Frustrated Stoner...

*UPDATED Scott Schmerelson says he is “feeling pretty good” these days, and the longtime LA Unified educator, counselor and principal certainly has lots of reasons for it. Schmerelson emerged from a logjam of five challengers to finish second in the March 3 school board primary election, good enough to make the May 19 runoff against District...

By Doyle McManus |  Los Angeles Times What’s the difference between growing up in an affluent family and growing up poor in America? Yes, upper-middle-class kids have more money. But they also have more attentive parents, stable families, good teachers — and even more friends and acquaintances. As a result, well-off kids have one more...

LA Unified officials yesterday unveiled results of the Arts Equity Index, the most comprehensive arts inventory the district has ever taken, and the findings show the district has a bad case of “art poverty.” Very few of the district’s 650,000 students have access to robust and uninterrupted arts programs from elementary school through high school,...

A team from Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet won first place in the 2015 Aspen Challenge: Los Angeles competition at last Saturday, beating out teams from 15 other schools. The challenge asked students to propose solutions to global problems, and Westchester’s 10-member team took on water sustainability awareness in Los Angeles, according to a LA Unified press...