An open and transparent search, background as an educator and under no circumstances someone from the Broad Academy. Those are the three major criteria that UTLA wants in the next LAUSD school superintendent. Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, told the LA School Report that he has made it known to...

Some think it is a threat to the public education system. Some welcome it. Members of the LA Unified school board have reacted quite differently to the announcement that the Broad, Keck and Walton Family Foundations are planning to expand the number of charter schools in the district to serve well beyond the 101,000 students...

On the first day of school yesterday as he visited a school in his district, LA Unified board president Steve Zimmer encountered an unexpected issue: Parents at Vine Street Elementary in Hollywood were complaining about the tents, mobile homes and the homeless people living on the street behind the school. “I know, I saw that while coming into...

As the school year begins next week, Mónica Garcia is celebrating her 10th year on the LA Unified School Board and her 15th year working in District 2, where she served as an academic advisor. A lifelong East L.A. resident, her parents met at Stevenson Middle School in the 1950s and they remember more of...

LA Unified board member Mónica García, a leading voice for education reform efforts, said she is open to plans by a group of foundations that wants to expand the number of charter schools in the district well beyond the 285 that are now serving district students. “I’m open to any strategy that helps children and families. We...

LAUSD School board president Steve Zimmer has given the board’s two newest members committee chairmanships. Ref Rodriguez will be taking over the Early Childhood Education and Parent Engagement Committee, which was previously run by Bennett Kayser, whom Rodriguez defeated in the June runoff. Zimmer named the other new board member, Scott Schmerelson, chairman of the Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Committee....

The LA Unified board endured a long and unusual protest last night as about 50 students demanded specific actions to get military-style weapons out of the hands of district school police. The students, some of them wearing bullet-proof vests, chanted for 20 minutes at the start of a meeting — “Back to school, no weapons”...

The LA Unified board has scheduled a special meeting next week to initiate discussions on how to conduct the search for a successor to Superintendent Ray Cortines, who has expressed a desire to step down by December. “The board will meet on July 30 to start just the technical part of the [search] process,” board president Steve...

LA Unified’s new board president, Steve Zimmer, had a recent chat with Politico, and some of his comments reached its Education Morning Edition today. Nothing surprising until the final paragraph, when he expresses his hope that the selection of a new superintendent to replace the soon-to-be-leaving Ramon Cortines doesn’t “devolve into another ground war over schooling,...

Steve Zimmer may think that being elected as the new LA Unified board president was the tough part. But now he has to live up to the expectations of his fellow members of the board. Even before he was voted in unanimously last week, the board members laid out their expectations of the future president....