A ruling on whether the state needs to step in and straighten out the scheduling problems at LA Unified’s Jefferson High School is now awaiting a decision by a Superior Court judge in Alameda County. As part of Cruz v. California, a bigger case seeking the state to assure the quality of education for students from...

While LA Unified board members are contemplating the continued employment of Superintendent John Deasy, one of his chief deputies has volunteered to serve as a short-term successor. Michelle King, Senior Deputy Superintendent School Operations and one of the highest-ranking African-Americans in Deasy’s administration, today forwarded a letter to all seven board members, saying she would...

George McKenna, third from left, officially became the seventh member of the LA Unified school board today, representing District 1, after he was sworn in by Rev. Jesse Jackson, left. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, second from left, and Danny Bakewell, publisher of the LA Sentinel, far right, also participated in the brief ceremony, which preceded the...

Two weeks into the new school year, LA Unified administrators are still working out bugs in a new computer system, a disruption that has made instruction particularly difficult for special education teachers, who need specific information for each of their students.. The new MiSiS — My Integrated Student Information System — is designed to track...

While officials from the teachers union, UTLA, are contemplating salary demands in a new labor contract with the district, they have not lost sight of another key issue, how to deal with teachers housed in what union officials derisively call “teacher jails.” The union’s Committee for Unjustly Housed Teachers was meeting today, for the first...

This story is updated throughout the day In a stunning defeat for California’s public school teachers unions, a state superior court today ruled in favor of students challenging teacher protection laws in Vergara v California. It was a total triumph for the nine student plaintiffs, giving them a victory on all counts in an equal...

Los Angeles Unified has named 22 educators as a Teacher of the Year for 2013-2014, and they will be honored at an event in September. Here’s the list: Angeles Cajayon, Bryson Avenue Magnet Elementary School, a second-grade teacher there for 12 years. Maricar J. Fortuno Catalán, Dr. Julian Nava Learning Academy – Business and Technology, is...

LA Unified has opened contract negotiations with the teachers union, UTLA, offering a 2 percent raise for all teachers for the current school year, and another 2 percent increase next year. The union immediately dismissed the offer in a news release, calling it “far short of what educators deserve after seven years without a pay...

Via The Nation | By JoAnn Wypijewski  Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as “teacher jail”: she doesn’t belong there....