Concerned that District 6 (East Valley) School Board candidate Monica Ratliff might oppose the leadership of LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, the LA Times editorial page secured a commitment from Ratliff to keep Deasy at the helm of the district as part of re-iterating its endorsement: “Ratliff, who was a public interest lawyer before she became a...

The May 21 LAUSD Board runoff for District 6 is less than a month away, and Teach Plus, an urban education advocacy group, is hosting a candidate forum on Thursday, May 2. Both candidates Monica Ratliff and Antonio Sanchez have been invited, but only Ratliff has confirmed her participation so far. The event is interactive,...

It’s not every day that an upstart online news site like ours gets the attention of a big mainstream media outlet. But it’s happened today — twice, in fact: The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times gives LA School Report credit for prompting a reassessment of its endorsement of East Valley School Board candidate Monica Ratliff. On the...

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was in Sacramento Wednesday for a press conference in support of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to shift more funding to school districts like LAUSD that have large numbers of poor and English Language Learner students. Brown’s central message to lawmakers: resistance is futile. “If people are going to fight it, they’re...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has added his voice to a group of education leaders who are reluctant to support the current union-supported teacher dismissal bill being considered in Sacramento unless it’s amended to address key issues. In an April 19 letter sent to the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D-Alamo), Villaraigosa praises Buchanan for...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given another $350,000 to the Coalition for School Reform, an independent expenditure (IE) group supporting Antonio Sanchez for School Board in the East Valley District 6 LAUSD School Board race that will be decided May 21. “For years, the funding in these sorts of races was only on...

Here’s USNews & World Report’s annual list of high schools for 2013, which includes a bunch of LA schools: Click the link to see the full list or search without magnet or charter schools.

At last week’s monthly meeting of the UTLA House of Representatives, President Warren Fletcher made a surprising announcement: he’s taking a pay cut, effective July 1. “Warren voluntarily took a pay cut to show solidarity with LAUSD teachers who have not had a raise in six years,” said UTLA spokesperson Suzanne Spurgeon in an email...

Last week, we reported that the charter school called Academia Semillas had not complied with an audit by LAUSD’s Office of the Inspector General, despite only barely being renewed last year. Yesterday, Superintendent John Deasy responded directly to the school: “If you can’t comply with this, then I can’t recommend that school’s renewal,” said Deasy. “It looks...

Earlier this week, the LA Weekly honed in on the outsized influence California’s largest teachers union is perceived to have on education policy issues, including recent efforts to speed the removal of sexual predators from the classroom. “That’s how CTA infamously killed a [2012] law to fire sex-pervert teachers, SB 1530,” LA Weekly writer Matthew Mullins wrote. “A...