Ellie Herman is a writer and English teacher, who taught Drama, Advanced Drama, Creative Writing, English 11 and 9th grade composition at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in south Los Angeles. A career union member, she is now immersed in a year-long journey, spending time in teachers’ classrooms at schools across the socioeconomic spectrum...

The School Board yesterday approved a motion by Steve Zimmer to ask state lawmakers to clarify the use of Proposition 39, a 2000 law mandating that public school space be shared equitably with charter schools. That law has lead to legal disputes between district schools and charters forced to share campuses as well as a...

A bill that would allow cafeteria workers, custodians and teacher aides to vote when a public school wants to become a charter is one vote (State Assembly) and one signature (Gov. Brown) away from becoming law. Both are expected, and it could happen within days. Currently, only teachers get to vote for conversion. But the change...

*Oops. In a previous version of this story the chart mistakenly used “district control” instead of “district autonomy,” reversing the meaning of the graphic. Apologies to our readers. The Los Angeles public school landscape is undergoing an unmistakable shift, with schools adopting new models that ultimately will result in students getting more choices. In a...

Public charter schools may be a divisive political issue for some teachers and unions but they’re still exceedingly popular with parents. As the Daily News points out, over 15,000 students are on the waiting list for charter schools in Los Angeles Unified. Some other numbers from the story: 100,000 – number of LAUSD students enrolled in charter schools...

There are 210 charter schools in LAUSD this year, according to the California Charter Schools Association. Many of them hope to grow and expand within LA. However, as part of the continued growth of charter schools nationwide, some Los Angeles-area charter school networks are spreading to other parts of the country, either by starting new...