After Steve Zimmer was elected unanimously last week as the LA Unified board president, one of his first orders of business was appointing a Vice President and finding members to represent the district to a series of organizations. In his first move, he named George McKenna, the District 1 representative, as board vice president, which didn’t...

One week after it appeared Richard Vladovic was destined to serve as president of the LA Unified board for a third consecutive term, the members unanimously today elected Steve Zimmer as its new leader, giving the district its most teacher union friendly president in more than a decade. Zimmer, who began his career with the district...

LA Unified school board Vice President Steve Zimmer was honored recently by the Los Angeles Food Policy Council for his efforts in getting the district to take a more progressive approach to food purchasing.  The council developed the Good Food Purchasing Program, which LA Unified adopted in 2012 and strengthened in late 2014 with two “Good Food” resolutions that Zimmer...

* UPDATED The close of the school year next month also brings an end to Richard Vladovic’s second term as LA Unified board president. Rules bar him from serving a third consecutive year. While critical issues await the new president — transformation to new technology, managing the growth of charters, dealing with new budgets, among...

Drinking too much at a work dinner or hitting on a co-worker’s spouse can make things truly uncomfortable at the office. But what about publicly damning a future colleague before his first day on the job? That’s the situation LA Unified school board Vice President Steve Zimmer faces, now that Ref Rodriguez has defeated his good...

LA Unified officials are in Sacramento today lobbying for adult education and transitional kindergarten programs. Oh yeah, and the budget, too. Among those joining in on the road trip are Chief Deputy Superintendent Michelle King, Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly and board members George McKenna and Steve Zimmer. They planned to meet with Senate President Pro...

* UPDATED If Ref Rodriguez wins election tomorrow, he’s got no friend in Steve Zimmer. Rodriguez is the challenger in the race for LA Unified school board District 5 against Bennett Kayser, easily the most heated of the three board elections. A loss by Kayser could shift the ideological balance of the seven member board...

* UPDATED Superintendent Ramon Cortines is putting off retirement for another year. The LA Unified school board yesterday voted unanimously to extend Cortines’s contract through the end of the 2015-16 school year. Terms of the deal are still under review, “but nothing, including salary, was expected to change from the previous pact,” district officials said...

LA Unified is on the brink of cutting a highly-successful preschool program for some of the district’s poorest children at the same time that members of the California state assembly are trying to expand early education programs for all low-income pre-Kindergarten students. The district’s School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP) is just one of a...