In a memo to all district employees yesterday, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines re-emphasized support for transgender youth and employees. With new attention drawn to transgender issues spurred by the public transitioning of Bruce to Caitlynn Jenner and the Emmy-winning TV show, “Transparent,” Cortines not only offered a definition of common terms dealing with transgendered issues, but...

A record seven LA Unified educators  were among 16 who have been named Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year. They are now in the running for the California Teacher of the Year award. The state winner moves up to the national competition, which will be held next spring. “I am so proud of our...

Among all the subgroups of LA Unified students who took the state’s new Smarter Balanced standardized tests, English language-learners (ELL) produced especially disappointing results, finishing behind the state average for ELLs and near the bottom compared with the state’s 11 other large districts. LA Unified has the most English learners of any district in the...

Teachers and students are getting devices with no lessons on how to use them. It’s all about iPads. Students can hack the tablets. Wrong, wrong, and well, sorta wrong. That’s the word that LAUSD wants to get out. The computer technology program at LAUSD gets a bad rap. Of course, the botched $1.3 billion iPad implementation and...

By Martin Blythe With severe drought and sustainability on the minds of the public and LAUSD Board members, now might be a good time to ask how agriculture and horticulture are faring in Los Angeles area high schools. The answer is: not well. They are among the programs most at risk of disappearing, just when they...

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines delivered a “jump start” to the newly-reformed Instructional Technology Initiative Task Force at its first meeting of the school year yesterday. He addressed such concerns as an already-aging supply of computers, a change in task force leadership and his renewed effort to get a device in the hands of every student in...

  LA Unified administrators have named eight schools using technology in ways that could be replicated throughout the district for how teachers and administrators have blended the use of computers, iPads and Internet-learning with their school curriculum. The approach these schools are taking could become the basis for a district-wide technology policy that would replace...

For 35 years, a group of mostly women gathered to work with clay at their adult education ceramics class, but now it may be canceled due to an LAUSD Catch-22 snafu. Adults, students, grandmothers and their grandchildren have attended the Adult Education Ceramics class at Mark Twain Middle School, and sometimes the class draws as many...

The LA Unified school board yesterday picked the search firm to find the district’s next superintendent, completing a relatively speedy process that suggests the members want a successor in place when Ramon Cortines steps down in December. The search process began Sunday, when the board narrowed the field to two head-hunter firms from five and was...