With his massive plan to enroll half of all LA Unified’s students into charter schools, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad is threatening major disruptions at LA Unified, cementing his role as Public Enemy No. 1 to many district and local union leaders. But Broad’s enduring support for public charter schools now appears to be contributing to...

Just months having securing a new three-year contract that included a hefty raise for its members, all is not well at the the Los Angeles teachers union, UTLA. The latest issue of its monthly newsletter is no easy, breezy read, and it suggests that the months and years ahead may be as tumultuous as the recent past. UTLA...

Steve Zimmer, president of the LA Unified school board, said today that plans by Eli Broad and other philanthropists to expand the number of charter schools in the district represents “a strategy to bring down LAUSD that leaves 250,000 kids vulnerable to damage.” A draft report of the plan appears show how the organizations involved...

A few days after the posh parties with the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Orlando Bloom, Ed Ruscha and Frank Gehry to celebrate the opening of the new Broad Museum, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is planning a protest at the museum on Sunday, aimed at its namesake: Eli Broad, one of LA’s leading philanthropists. More specifically,...

A federal agency is looking into a complaint that United Teachers of Los Angeles misused money from the union’s $3 million strike fund. An Aug. 12  letter from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General said the complaint and supporting documents went to the Racketeering and Fraud Investigations for review. An official from...

When the union representing LA Unified teachers meets tomorrow afternoon to discuss “unjustly housed teachers,” one of the potential discussion issues is whether UTLA could get involved in the class action suit against LAUSD arising out of dispute involving Ralf Esquith. Lawyers representing have asked the union to join the class action but is still awaiting a response....

A group of LA Unified students joined local and national educators last week to describe academic challenges they face and to suggest ideas for what could help them. The four-hour discussion last Thursday evening kicked off a weekend of activities sponsored by UTLA in conjunction with the “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African...

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...

The first big step was getting a pay raise. That happened earlier this year. So what’s next for UTLA? United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl says extensive input from teachers over the summer points to conditions in the classroom and the future of health benefits as among the issues most important to the union membership. He...

* UPDATED UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said the teachers union is planning an aggressive campaign to oppose Eli Broad and other wealthy foundation leaders who have announced plans for a major expansion of charter schools in LA Unified. In a wide-ranging interview that focused on the state of charters in the district, Caputo-Pearl was highly...