Tonight, Monday October 8, Superintendent John Deasy will make his “State of the District” speech at 5 PM at the 2-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Koreatown. The whole event will last an hour, and include speeches from board member Marguerite LaMotte and school board president Monica Garcia. Deasy’s speech, accompanied by a power point presentation,...

You may already have heard that LAUSD Board member Nury Martinez will introduce a motion at the Tuesday October 9 monthly school board meeting to make arts a “core subject” (KPCC: LAUSD considers making arts education a ‘core subject’). And we’ve already told you that Board member Steve Zimmer is holding off on offering a revised...

On Monday, October 8, the day before the monthly board meeting, Superintendent John Deasy will speak about the state of LAUSD at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. LAUSD stakeholders will gather to hear Deasy’s strategic plan and strategies for the district’s next three years. Click here for full event details. It’s not yet clear if...

Here’s an interesting chart from the November issue of Chicago Magazine which seems to show that LAUSD schools run longer than other big cities like DC or NYC (and that the poverty rate for LAUSD kids is second only to Chicago). However, the average teacher salary is lower than all but Miami-Dade. And the graduation...

LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer’s proposal to overhaul charter school oversight and, more controversially, to place a moratorium on new charter schools, has been postponed until the November 13 board meeting, according to the just-posted agenda for the meeting this Tuesday, October 9. Zimmer’s idea was first presented at last month’s board meeting, and generated heavy...

Until recently, millions of dollars of special interest money flowed directly to candidates for their own campaigns (shown in red). However, the March election for three LAUSD Board seats promises to be dominated by a torrent of outside money from independent expenditure committees (IEs) – much the way super PACs have eclipsed campaign contributions at the...

Check out this Huffington Post blog penned by Carl Finer, a teacher who taught at LAUSD for seven years but switched to a Los Angeles charter school last year. A member of a pro-reform teacher voice organization called Teach Plus, Finer explains why he made the move, and what charter and district schools could learn from each...

School board member Tamar Galatzan (pictured) is quite possibly the busiest elected official in the city. One of two board members who has chosen to serve part-time (along with Nury Martinez), Galatzan also has a full-time job at the City Attorney’s office, and is the mother of two boys in elementary school. (She’s the only board...

There are some fun parts to this novelty video put together by some filmmaker parents at LAUSD’s Aldama Elementary, including the chorus (“Our budget’s been cut, school’s hitting the skids, We’re coming for you, and we’re bringing our kids.”) Obviously, these parents want voters to support increased funding for schools proposed in some of next month’s...

Tomorrow morning at 10 am, the Board of Education’s Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee will meet (see agenda here). According to LAUSD spokesman Tom Waldman, one of the issues to be discussed tomorrow is propositions 30 and 38, and what effect they will have on the district should they pass or fail. Both propositions are...