Los Angeles School Board

The Los Angeles school board gave tentative approval Thursday to eliminating independent study contracts with outside agencies and reducing the district's affirmative action section, saving the beleaguered school district nearly $2 million. Members also offered suggestions for cuts, ranging from having assistant principals teach one day a week to cutting their field representatives for one year. A final vote on budget cuts will be taken next week.

The Los Angeles school board Tuesday renewed the operating charter for a Woodland Hills school recently embroiled in controversy. The petition by Ivy Academia Entreprenurial Charter School was renewed with little discussion, less than two weeks after a jury convicted its founders of grand theft, embezzlement and other charges. The 4-2 vote allows the school to remain open for another five years. “Ivy has come a long way,” said Carl Raggio, a special advisor to the charter's board of directors.

Three past or present schoolteachers from the San Fernando Valley, one of them a former president of the teachers union, will challenge incumbent Mark Slavkin for the new Westside-West Valley seat on the Los Angeles school board this spring. Slavkin's stiffest competition was eliminated recently when Julie Korenstein, a board member who lives in Porter Ranch, announced that she will move to the mid-Valley and run for the seat being vacated by longtime board member Roberta L. Weintraub.

The race between Bennett Kayser, the teachers union-backed candidate, and Luis Sanchez, the mayor's pick, for the Los Angeles Board of Education remained unclear Wednesday as Kayser claimed a thin lead and thousands of ballots still needed to be counted. Kayser, a retired educator, had received about 300 more votes than Sanchez, the chief of staff to the school board president, who was backed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several labor groups and other elected officials. But more than 13,000 ballots remained to be counted throughout the city, according to the city clerk's office, and many of them are for other races, not the runoff for the school board's 5th District, which stretches from Los Feliz to Maywood.

The winners of the Los Angeles Unified School District board elections will face many challenges. BREAKING UP THE DISTRICT A vigorous movement is afoot to break up the giant Los Angeles Unified School District. Prompted by parents' discontent, mainly in the San Fernando Valley and Westside, it is supported by prominent lawmakers including state Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who introduced a bill to make it possible.

Three past or present schoolteachers, one of them a former president of the teachers union, will challenge incumbent Mark Slavkin for the new Westside-West San Fernando Valley seat on the Los Angeles school board this spring. Slavkin's stiffest competition was eliminated last week when Julie Korenstein, a board member who lives in Porter Ranch, announced that she will move to the mid-valley and run for the seat being vacated by longtime board member Roberta L. Weintraub.

Like several of her classmates at John F. Kennedy High School, Blythe Klein had no idea that the Los Angeles school board had designated June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. But it seemed a logical decision to her once she found out. "I am for it," the 18-year-old senior from Granada Hills said one afternoon this past week. "We have other months for people who are proud to be who they are."

In the new District 4, which stretches from Chatsworth to Westchester, incumbent Mark Slavkin is seeking a return to the Los Angeles Board of Education on the strength of his political support on the Westside. About 60% of the district's voters live south of Mulholland Drive. That is good for Slavkin, who represented the Westside exclusively until last year's reapportionment put him in a district that includes West Los Angeles and the western San Fernando Valley.

The Los Angeles school board wants to shove homosexuality at our schoolchildren by having a Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, and the Supreme Court has banned any mention of God in public schools (June 25). Wow! What a country! JOANNE M. MILLER, Walnut

Leticia Quezada's attempt to distance herself from the Los Angeles School Board on the $250,000 public relations expenditure issue is understandable, since she is running for Congress (letter, May 22). But The Times' May 16 editorial dealt with the bigger picture, which she fails to acknowledge, and that is the failure of many elected officials, including the Los Angeles School Board, to act responsibly, now and in the past. If she cares about those of us who elect persons to deal with the school crisis, she should stop advocating non-citizens and illegal aliens' right to vote in certain elections.

The school board president unveiled a surprise plan Tuesday to avoid teacher layoffs based on a compromise being pushed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Without advance notice, Monica Garcia proposed using more federal economic stimulus dollars right away to prevent the loss of teachers in the 2009-10 school year, which begins July 1. But in exchange, employee unions would have to match each dollar spent now with pay reductions that would apply to the next school year. Because of a looming budget shortfall, as many as 3,500 non-tenured local teachers have received notice of possible layoffs, as have thousands of non-teaching employees.

An administrator from San Diego's acclaimed High Tech High has been named head of the California Charter Schools Assn., which has been a powerful advocate and organizing force for charter schools in the state, the organization announced Monday. Jed Wallace, chief operations officer of High Tech High since 2004, takes over an association that rose to prominence under the leadership of former Los Angeles school board member Caprice Young. Young left in August to take a job with Knowledge Universe, an education venture owned by financier and philanthropist Michael Milken.

Armando Sosa's elementary school is just a quick scramble up a steep dirt path and over a crosswalk from his home in Ramona Gardens, an Eastside housing project known for its crime and violence. If he's late, he can hear the school bell from his bedroom. His mother, Liliana Martinez, loves Murchison Elementary but worries that Armando's zeal for learning will wither in middle school. She has seen too many children from the projects nose dive in sixth grade and begin gravitating toward the gang life that has devoured the youth of Ramona Gardens for generations.

Los Angeles City Council candidate Jose Huizar won the endorsement of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday, an advantage that helps position Huizar as the front-runner in this fall's election for the vacant 14th District seat. The announcement, which had been expected for weeks, came the same day that Huizar, a Los Angeles Unified School District board member, reported that he had raised $160,897 through the end of June.

Los Angeles Unified School District's game of musical chairs began Friday as Supt. Roy Romer announced which of the current 11 subdistrict chiefs would remain as their numbers shrink. Earlier in the week, the Los Angeles school board voted to reduce the number of administrative subdistricts from 11 to eight as a cost-saving measure. The new configuration was suggested by Romer as a compromise with the teachers union, which originally sought to abolish the subdistrict system altogether.

In the wake of recent shootings near Los Angeles public schools, public officials on Wednesday announced a new, coordinated effort to better police campuses and the areas surrounding them. "Schools must be a safe haven," said Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn at a news conference at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights. "The neighborhoods around schools need to be safe as well."