Barely a week into his job as LA Unified superintendent, Ramon Cortines is pushing back against the school board that hired him, voicing opposition to using any more of the $1.3 billion in bond money to buy digital devices equipped with curriculum for use in classroom instruction. Three times since his first day on the...

In a speech today  in Buena Park, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, cited former LA Unified superintendent John Deasy as a failed example of school district management and argued for collaboration over fiat as the pathway to success in public education. “Collaboration is the vehicle that creates trust. It’s the vehicle that...

Via Los Angeles Times | By Steve Lopez It was back-to-school night in August. A time for new beginnings and high hopes at Thomas Starr King Middle School on the Silver Lake/Los Feliz border. Then came an awkward moment. With new parents and students in the room, a teachers union rep got up on a...

By Michelle Crames My daughter started Kindergarten this year, and part of why I enrolled her in public school was that things were getting better, and my belief that our family’s energy and resources could contribute to bettering our community. Two months after her start, we learn that Superintendent John Deasy, who has provided leadership...

Now that John Deasy has stepped down as superintendent of LA Unified, replaced on an interim basis by Ray Cortines, it’s open season on speculating who might be considered as a permanent superintendent. In the second largest district in the nation, the challenges of finding a candidate who is qualified, interested in the job and gels with the...

* UPDATED If it’s Tuesday, there must be another LA Unified board meeting. Now that the John Deasy era is over, the seven members begin facing more mundane matters, and this time, tomorrow, the 10 am meeting has only one item for open discussion before the members move behind closed doors to discuss, among other...

On the day after he stepped down as LA Unified Superintendent, John Deasy offered a glimpse of what may be next for him, and apparently the options include politics. “I’m not going to speak about them specifically but I would give you the general topics,” Deasy told a group of reporters on a telephone press call...

Twitter and other social media accounts interested in LA Unified news started blowing up late Wednesday night after LA School Report broke the news that John Deasy was stepping down as superintendent, and the online chatter has continued through today. Check out our Storify feed below to see some interesting, funny and informative tweets and...

What a momentous day it was. One superintendent out. Another steps in. The LA Unified community and social media were alive with chatter — people sorry to see John Deasy go, people celebrating his departure, people happy to see Ray Cortines return for a third deployment, people wondering what the school board was smoking in...

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, stopped short today of saying he was pleased with former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy‘s resignation, instead insisting that achieving the union’s contract demands — not Deasy’s resignation — would be a victory. “What’s going to be a victory for UTLA is actually winning the demands in our...