It was a bombshell of a story on Saturday, the LA Times reporting that a group of foundations is exploring plans to expand the number of charter schools within LA Unified to serve many beyond the 100,000 students who now attend charters in the district. What would that mean exactly? Unclear for the time being....

Alliance College-Ready Public Charter Schools said today the group violated no laws over unionization efforts and asserted that some Alliance teachers “feel harassed by UTLA’s communications tactics.” Catherine Suitor, Chief Development & Communications Officer of Alliance, said in a statement to LA School Report the charter group looks forward to arguing its case before the state...

With a hearing now scheduled for Aug. 21, LA Unified’s teachers union, UTLA, will have the chance to argue before a neutral party that Alliance College-Ready Public Charter Schools, violated state education law by blocking the union’s efforts to bring Alliance teachers into its membership. The union’s accusations are detailed in two complaints (here and...

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has announced that it negotiated new contracts for teachers at four LA Unified charter schools — Palisades Charter High, Pacoima Charter Elementary, Ivy Academia and Granada Hills Charter High. Two of the contracts include raises for teachers. UTLA currently represents more than 1,000 educators at 13 charter schools. They include six...

When LA Unified and its teachers union agreed to new three-year deals on a contract and health benefits this spring, one strike was averted. But another may be on the horizon. UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl took the stage over the weekend at the union’s annual leadership conference and made another strike threat in his State of the Union...

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, used his state of the union speech Friday night to call for a raise in union dues of $19 a month, an increase he said would enable the union to prepare for future challenges “greater and more dangerous” than those of recent years. Reminding members that UTLA has not...

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, a 2013 case with huge implications for unions’ nationwide in their ability to collect dues, the Los Angeles teachers union, UTLA, is gearing up for whatever the justices decide. A victory by the plaintiffs would reverse a decades-old precedent, Abood...

UTLA, the LA Unified teachers union, has been operating at a deficit for seven of the last 10 years, the union’s treasurer, Arlene Inouye, wrote in the group’s May newsletter. She said union officials approved deficit budgets for three years during the past decade, but when actual expenses were applied, the union overspent in four additional years since 2006,...

Jose Lara, a prominent leader of the LA teachers union, UTLA, was recently named the 2015 Social Justice Activist of the Year by the National Education Association (NEA). Lara helped lead a successful grassroots effort to get the LA Unified school board to adopt ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. He is vice president of the El...

* UPDATED LA Unified elementary school teacher David Goldberg has been elected as secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Association. Goldberg, 43, spent most of his 19 years at Murchison Elementary, where he is a bilingual teacher who is fluent in Spanish and American Sign Language. He was one of dozens of educators who spent a night in...