Only one month’s worth of data is in, but if it holds true, bringing flavored milk back to the schools could offset some of LA Unified’s budget deficit. At Tuesday’s Budget, Audit and Facilities meeting — the first official LA Unified committee meeting of 2017 — new Food Services Director Joseph Vaughn discussed the preliminary numbers collected...

Fear and anxiety of what lies ahead with a new Donald Trump administration, particularly for DACA students, led LA school officials to pass two new resolutions this week. A sweeping resolution calling for “safe zones” last month wasn’t enough. Two more resolutions specifically mentioning the new regime were passed this week. Also, the teachers union is...

By the end of Thursday, LA Unified will be letting the state and county governments know that the district may not be able to meet its financial obligations in upcoming years because it faces a cumulative deficit of $1.46 billion through the 2018-2019 school year. Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly gave the unsettling news to...

It’s back to square one. After voting in the fall to start school closer to Labor Day against the superintendent’s recommendation, enough school board members changed their minds Tuesday night and reverted the calendar to this year’s schedule, citing the need to fight decreasing enrollment and the competition from charter schools. That means starting the school year again...

LA Unified officials say the district has bent over backward to give schools as much local control as possible over discretionary positions and funds. But has it backfired? Are schools filthier, counselors scarce and financial bookkeeping in disarray because principals can juggle staff resources and choose which positions to fill? That’s what school board members are now...

*UPDATED School board members gave a tentative but tepid thumbs up to a strategic plan for the LA Unified School District after more than four hours of discussion Tuesday, but they also called for more urgency. The biggest change since an August draft of the 2016-2019 Strategic Plan was a simplified singular goal: 100 percent graduation....

LA Unified success stories from a raft of school models were on display Tuesday, and the unifying theme was how school leaders had to get around district bureaucracy in order to succeed. Principals from affiliated charters, magnets, pilots and choice schools touted their successes at the Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee. All of them...

Disruptive Person Letters that can be used to keep certain people from school campuses are still being angrily criticized by some parents, despite LA Unified’s attempt at softening some of the language and adding appeals procedures. A committee reviewing the policy on Tuesday spent nearly three hours discussing the issue with more than a dozen people...

The principal at Hollywood High School has taken to heart the superintendent’s call to think creatively of ways to raise money for her school. The LA Unified School District doesn’t provide her the Advanced Placement textbooks she needs to get her students ready for college, and she wants to install state-of-the-art equipment at the school’s New Media...

Never uttering the word “Trump,” the LA Unified school board held a day’s worth of board meetings Tuesday that delicately reflected the anxieties of their constituents and a general upheaval of emotions in the education system over the past week since the election results. Then, they doubled-down by unanimously passing a resolution declaring that they would...