It was a packed house at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center Wednesday night  for a forum with the three District 6 candidates —  Maria Cano, Monica Ratliff and Antonio Sanchez — sponsored by Families First and moderated by  Fidel Ramirez, a parent and after-school coordinator for the Youth Policy Institute. The crowd of more than 250, mostly parents, sat quietly during...

It was perhaps no surprise that District 4 School Board member Steve Zimmer was visibly upset when he happened to run into Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Deputy Mayor for Education, Joan Sullivan, at today’s United Way education event. “RFK, Joan? Really?” said Zimmer as the two rode the escalator together. “That’s just wrong.” “I don’t know what...

Prior to today’s United Way mayoral candidate’s forum, we had been told to expect Wendy Greuel to “come out” as an “education reformer.” But instead it was Eric Garcetti who took the opportunity to align himself with the so-called reform movement, voicing unequivocal support for LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, the parent trigger law, and even...

The teachers union political action committee has allocated the majority of its expenditures in the East LA District 2 School Board election — almost $90,000 — to attack incumbent LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia and bolster the chances of forcing a runoff between Garcia and one of her three union-endorsed candidates. But are the attacks accurate...

Follow LA School Report‘s Hillel Aron and others at the United Way Education summit going right now!

Anyone (like me) who thought that American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten was going to follow up on her recent trip to LA with a big, fat Lotto-sized check for District 4 candidate Steve Zimmer and UTLA-PACE is going to be sorely disappointed. Word is out that the AFT has sent a $75,000 check to...

A massive spending spree of $3.4 million by outside groups has broken records in the Los Angeles School Board races with still seven days left before the election. That’s an increase of $1 million in just a week, according to the latest figures available at the LA City Ethics Commission. Low voter turnout and a...

On Wednesday, February 27, Antonio Sanchez, Monica Ratliff, and Maria Cano — the three candidates competing for the District 6 School Board seat representing the East San Fernando Valley — will participate at a charter school parent event hosted by Families That Can, a statewide network of charter school parents that’s part of the California Charter...

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has reported that its campaign spending for the 2013 School Board race jumped from $72,000 to $1.7 million in the past month.  But multiple independent expenditure (IE) accounts and unmatched transfers between the union’s two committees make it difficult to verify the accuracy or completeness of those figures.

In a recent conversation with LA School Report, Dr. Judith Perez, President of the Administrators Union, weighed in on LAUSD’s controversial new teacher evaluation guideline: “It feels rushed to us,” she said. “We understand the judge’s requirement that this be implemented this year. But what happens then is an attitude of, ‘just get it done.'” Perez’s comments,...