Responding to incidents of iPad misuse at district schools and widespread public criticism over problems with the rollout, the LA Unified board yesterday approved setting a special meeting later this month to “publicly grapple” with iPad issues. The 5-2 vote on a resolution from Monica Ratliff, who chairs a committee that oversees the iPad initiative,...

Is the Los Angeles Unified School Board finally coming to terms with harsh fiscal realities of a post-recession world? That’s what it seemed like yesterday, when the members met for one of the shortest meetings in recent memory, only four hours. A combination of declining enrollment, federal cuts in special education and this year’s Federal sequestration...

LA School Report is live tweeting from today’s LA Unified Board Meeting.  The twitter feed is live on the right hand column or click @laschoolreport.

With growing opposition around the country to the Common Core State Standards, one governor found an easy way to get rid of them: Change the name. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, feeling pressure from groups that believe the standards are a “federal intrusion,” has ordered state agencies to stop using the term “Common Core.’’ Instead, she has...

The election campaign for president of the teachers union, UTLA, has expanded with a third candidate entering the race, joining the incumbent, Warren Fletcher, and a previously-announced challenger, Alex Caputo-Pearl, a member of the Progressive Educators for Action caucus within the union. The new candidate, David Garcia, is a former Navy corpsman and veteran of the first Gulf War...

Richard Vladovic, president of the LA Unified School Board, has agreed to meet with a coalition of community groups that claimed Vladovic was ignoring their requests to meet over spending issues. The meeting has been scheduled for 11 a.m. Oct. 18, and it follows a sequence of events that began with a letter the coalition, known as CLASS,...

The state of California and its two biggest teachers unions are asking a state Superior Court to throw out a case about getting rid of “ineffective teachers,” saying passage of a bill now before Gov. Jerry Brown would make the lawsuit unnecessary. Lawyers for the plaintiffs responded by calling the request a “sham,” arguing that the...

A proposal to require the Los Angeles teachers union (UTLA) to adopt an online voting system for electing its leaders has qualified as a ballot measure (see petition wording here), LA School Report has learned. It must now be taken to the rank and file for a vote. Megan Markevich, a middle school English teacher who...