Bennett Kayser

Bennett Kayser, the candidate favored by the teachers union, appeared to be in the lead for a Los Angeles Board of Education seat Tuesday night, ahead of Luis Sanchez, the pick of the mayor, according to returns. The race to represent the 5th District, which stretches from Los Feliz to Maywood, was the only school board race to go to a runoff. Three other seats were decided in March, but neither Sanchez, chief of staff to the current board president, nor Kayser, a retired teacher, was able to garner a majority of voters.

Re "A city agenda for schools," Opinion, May 15 Los Angeles Board of Education member Bennett Kayser is right about city officials having no direct influence on public schools. Unfortunately, the public is apparently unaware of this. However, in comparing the Los Angeles Unified School District with the relationship between San Francisco's school system and city government, Kayser forgets a major difference: L.A. Unified serves students from other cities as well as Los Angeles, whereas the San Francisco Unified School District supplies school service only to the city and county of San Francisco.

Bennett Kayser, the candidate favored by the teachers union, won the last remaining open seat for the Los Angeles Board of Education on Thursday, beating Luis Sanchez, who was supported by the mayor. "Teachers and teachers unions have been scapegoated, and I think we're on the road to vindication right now," Kayser said. Kayser, a retired teacher, received about 10,700 votes, nearly 600 more than Sanchez, who is chief of staff for the current school board president, Monica Garcia.

The money race among two remaining candidates for the Los Angeles Board of Education is competitive, but outside spending has skewed resources decidedly toward the one backed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Antonio Sanchez has collected more than $67,000 in contributions for a May 21 runoff in District 6, which stretches across the east San Fernando Valley. Opponent Monica Ratliff has raised nearly $27,000, according to reports posted Friday by the city Ethics Commission. The outside spending tells a more one-sided story.

The race for the last available Los Angeles school board seat has turned both expensive, with almost $3 million spent in all, and nasty, with one candidate calling for an ethics investigation of his opponent, who in turn said the other's policies are bigoted. But even as he stuck to his earlier charge that some of his opponent's ideas "could be seen as racist," Bennett Kayser said he regretted the overall tone of the campaign. "I wish that things would have been more intellectual and about educational policy, not negative campaigning," he said.

L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy has cautioned school board members to avoid taking sides over who should control 15 new and 22 low-performing campuses next year. Deasy was responding to complaints that school board member Bennett Kayser is openly backing plans being developed by three groups of district teachers for academies at South Region High School No. 8, a campus set to open next year in Maywood. The school board is expected to choose the winning bidders early next year.

Los Angeles school officials quietly stepped back this week from a public commitment to health classes with a memo explaining that schools can avoid the previously required course. Wednesday's memo to the Board of Education lays out possible exceptions to the one-semester class that could eventually apply to every high school. Some school systems have stopped requiring the health class to save money. But L.A. Unified officials recently agreed to maintain the class even though it is not required for admission into the state college system.

The Los Angeles City Council has agreed to pay $24,191 in attorneys' fees for Bennett Kayser, an Echo Park homeowner who had to go to court last spring to get his name on the April municipal primary ballot. Kayser, who was soundly defeated in the election by 13th District Councilman Michael Woo, had failed to qualify for the ballot because the city clerk's office said he did not collect enough valid signatures.

Two popular Los Angeles charter schools have allowed some families to bypass a lottery for admission in exchange for providing special services or a substantial volunteer commitment. The practices of Larchmont Charter School and Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts have raised concerns that such preference policies, if allowed, could open the door to well-connected friends or wealthier families who promise to contribute. In effect, critics say, charters could end up functioning more like private schools than campuses almost entirely supported with tax dollars.

The Los Angeles school board agreed Tuesday to renew a deal with the district's dental insurance provider over the objections of a board member who had persuaded his colleagues to defeat an earlier version. Two weeks ago, Richard Vladovic complained that MetLife had tried to overcharge him for a mouth guard and then provided poor customer service, even though he acknowledged MetLife representatives eventually apologized. Vladovic won the support of three other board members to reject a three-year, multimillion-dollar contract renewal with the company, which provides insurance to nearly 100,000 current and former L.A. Unified School District employees.

Union officials representing school cafeteria workers led a noisy rally of parents Tuesday to save a Los Angeles Unified classroom breakfast program that feeds nearly 200,000 children but was in danger of being axed after sharp criticism by teachers. Even as the majority of L.A. Unified school board members indicated they would vote to continue the program, about 100 parents turned out at Hooper Elementary in South L.A., waving noisemakers and signs in Spanish and English to save the breakfasts.

A majority of L.A. Unified School Board members said they will vote to continue a classroom breakfast program that feeds nearly 200,000 children but was in danger of being axed after sharp criticism by the teachers union. The program's fate was thrown into question last week when L.A. Supt. John Deasy said he would eliminate it without explicit board direction to retain it. He said United Teachers Los Angeles had complained that serving breakfast in the classroom, rather than before school in the cafeteria, took up too much instructional time and created messes.

The Los Angeles Board of Education approved the first use of the controversial parent trigger law in the city Tuesday, clearing the way for sweeping changes at 24th Street Elementary School in the West Adams neighborhood. The board also moved to purchase tablet computers for 31,000 students in the first phase of an ambitious effort to improve technology in schools. And the board approved the first charter for a group of downtown Los Angeles parents seeking to open a new campus for their children in the growing neighborhood.

Carlos Santana. Johnnie Cochran. Al Gore. The parents of City Councilman Tony Cardenas. It's a diverse group with at least one thing in common: Los Angeles public schools bear their names. The Los Angeles Unified School District's decade-long school building program is winding down after about 100 campuses have been named. As district officials replace such temporary generic names as South L.A. Area New High School No. 3 with permanent monikers, the process has become political, controversial or just plain wacky.

By now, it should be apparent that charter schools have been the spark to the education reform flame in the Los Angeles Unified School District. At first, applicants hoping to open publicly funded but independently operated charter schools had to fight for every new campus, opposed by school board members who were strong union allies. But as charters showed remarkable progress with disadvantaged and minority students who had been failing in regular public schools, appreciation for them increased.

Los Angeles school officials quietly stepped back this week from a public commitment to health classes with a memo explaining that schools can avoid the previously required course. Wednesday's memo to the Board of Education lays out possible exceptions to the one-semester class that could eventually apply to every high school. Some school systems have stopped requiring the health class to save money. But L.A. Unified officials recently agreed to maintain the class even though it is not required for admission into the state college system.

In an ongoing battle with City Council candidate Bennett Kayser, the city of Los Angeles has gone to court in an effort to remove his name from the April 11 municipal primary ballot. Assistant City Atty. Anthony Saul Alperin on Thursday asked the state Court of Appeal to throw out a Superior Court ruling last week requiring the city to add Kayser's name to the ballot. Alperin asked the appellate court to rule on the matter as quickly as possible, but he said no date has been set.

The new election boundaries for the Los Angeles Board of Education will change minimally under new maps approved Wednesday, although they will offer something for each of the politicians who now hold those offices. The boundaries, which were approved on a 9-2 vote by the L.A. City Council, followed a process that, early on, looked as though it could end the careers of several school board members. Early proposals moved the homes of some outside their district, or left them with territories that would be difficult to hold in an election.