Today’s LA Times editorial page notes that several of the Board member budget resolutions being debated later today aren’t realistic or necessary. While there should be targeted hiring in key areas such as librarians and school counselors, according to the Times, the Bennett Kayser resolution to restore staffing levels across the board “makes no sense.”...

There was an air of excitement surrounding today’s special Board meeting to discuss LAUSD’s budget, resulting in no less than four television crews in addition to KNX radio and three (count ’em!) education reporters live-tweeting the proceedings. The cause of all the excitement?  The expected clash between Board members who want LAUSD to rehire teachers...

At the May School Board meeting earlier this month, Board member Bennett Kayser (pictured) called for a special meeting to discuss next year’s budget, which is due June 30. That meeting is being held on Tuesday, June 4, at which time Board members are scheduled to introduce to two new resolutions (see agenda here), which...

Here’s an interesting idea from School Board Member Bennett Kayser’s LA Times op-ed this morning: make the Department of Water and Power (DWP) give LAUSD a discount. “In San Francisco, public schools get deeply discounted electricity from the local utility under an agreement forged decades ago,” he writes. The DWP, one of the most powerful institutions in...

In a statement released Tuesday morning, United Teachers Los Angeles softened its tone on Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), a program in almost 10,000 LAUSD classrooms that feeds low-income students free breakfast at their desks in the morning. The union’s announcement followed a Monday night LA Times story that said a majority of School Board...

The May 14 School Board meeting two weeks from today is shaping up to be a blockbuster event featuring mass demonstrations by two unions and a host of conflict-laden issues for the Board to decide on. The teachers union has promised to hold a large rally demanding that LAUSD hire more teachers, nurses and librarians....

The agenda for today’s School Board meeting is packed with hot-topic resolutions, including a plan to streamline LAUSD’s teacher misconduct investigation process, a call to work with state legislators to pass a new teacher dismissal bill, and a plan to reduce student suspensions and discipline for “willful defiance” in LA schools. These topics have received...

Picking up on a comparison LA School Report first made last month, LAUSD Board Member Bennett Kayser published an op-ed in the LA Daily News last week in which he compared his 2011 runoff against Luis Sanchez to this year’s runoff between District 6 candidates Antonio Sanchez and  Monica Ratliff: “I beat the big money.  My...