By Jennifer Pullen Tens of thousands of people, including Los Angeles Unified School District Board President Steve Zimmer, participated in a “walk-in” last week to show support for traditional public schools at a time when they are facing increasing pressure from — and loss of students to — charter and private operators. Staged in partnership with local and national...

The second largest school district in the nation went on record last week saying it won’t allow law enforcement agents looking to deport those without documentation into any of its 1,274 schools without a review process. The LA Unified School Board voted unanimously to make the district a “safe zone.” The district is not the first. Across the nation...

As part of demonstrations taking place at schools around LA Unified and in cities across the country, a group of roughly 100 protesters made up of parents, students, district leaders and politicians gathered outside Hamilton High School Wednesday morning to rally in support of public education. “Every day at this school I’m exposed to someone with different...

More than 20,000 parents, students and teachers in LA Unified are expected to stage a “Walk-In” before school on Wednesday orchestrated by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools to protest charter expansion and call for greater investment in public education. “We have coordinated this with the school district and the superintendent’s office,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president...

It was cause for celebration when 17-year-old Cedrick Argueta was one in 12 students in the entire world to ace one of the toughest college-level calculus tests. But it wasn’t just one test. Cedrick also earned perfect scores on the English and math sections of the American College Testing entrance exam. And it wasn’t just...

  In dual votes Tuesday about a long-vacant school in the west San Fernando Valley, the LA Unified school board halted a charter school that was previously proposed for the site and instead allowed a district school to pursue it. The school board gave a unanimous thumbs-up for Hale Charter Academy to pursue a proposal to develop a performing...

*UPDATED A number of charter school operators across LA Unified say the district and its school board are turning up the heat on them to an unbearable degree while using the Charter Schools Division and Office of Inspector General to make approval and renewals of charter schools increasingly difficult. They claim there has been an increase...

Students explain how Linked Learning works at LAUSD schools

For all the successful magnet schools in LA Unified and elsewhere, they are not attracting as much federal support as charter schools. That was a stark message from the district’s federal lobbyist, who told a district board committee this week that Washington is increasing national support for charter schools by nearly 32 percent but by...

It’s a such unique moment with the leadership of Sacramento that LAUSD should find a way to take advantage. That was the message from LA Unified board President Steve Zimmer to district staff at a board committee meeting yesterday: figure out how to ask for more money from the state, even more than the district’s fair...