Los Angeles Unified District

In a ringing triumph for longtime critics of the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law Wednesday a bill that will ease the way for dissatisfied voters to carve up the nation's second-largest school system. At an afternoon ceremony in his office, Wilson brought closer to fruition a campaign dating back at least a quarter of a century, when detractors of the 708-square-mile district first suggested splintering it into smaller units.

Half a dozen arms reached for the sky, some gently grazing a basketball as it escaped the court and thudded out of bounds at the Edward Roybal Learning Center. Despite their best efforts at trying to keep the ball in the game, both teams showed no hint of defeat, even after one was declared the winner. The Los Angeles Unified School District/Special Olympics Unified Basketball League's Eastern finals were underway, and the mood was decidedly different from that of other sports finals.

The state's review of 11 public high schools on the Westside TEST RESULTS COURSE SAT SAT Advanced High School Verbal Math Placement Math English Science State Avg 421 476 9.5 67 73 33 BEVERLY HILLS UNIFIED DISTRICT Beverly Hills 448 519 49.8 82 90 49 CULVER CITY UNIFIED DISTRICT Culver 425 474 16.7 76 93 28 LOS ANGELES UNIFIED DISTRICT Fairfax 393 478 16.8 59 55 26 Hamilton 412 456 7.1 50 38 29 Hollywood 329 440 3.6 40 33 14 L. A. C.E.S. 438 460 20.4 86 96 52 Palisades 436 480 25.

Students from Western Avenue Elementary's special education classes sat in the shade and counted rings on "tree cookies" taken from redwoods on a recent field trip. "This is where learning comes alive and is more meaningful," said teacher Mysie Dela Pena about the Christensen Math Science and Technology Center in San Pedro. "We talk about a lot of these elements in the classroom, but this is where they get the experience firsthand. " The interactive life science classroom is a beleaguered survivor of the Los Angeles Unified School District's budget cuts.

Plenty of people dislike the prospect of year-round schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. Parents in the San Fernando Valley don't want the lives of their children interrupted because schools are crowded in other parts of the district. Parents in more crowded communities don't want only their children on the non-traditional calendar. The competing complaints are all legitimate.

Their goal was simple: Streamline teaching techniques, lesson plans and classroom materials among elementary, middle and high school faculty in the northwest San Fernando Valley. The result? "Simply Complex," a 90-minute educational conference on Tuesday that brought together 470 participants from the Chatsworth Complex, a group of 12 schools formed two years ago as part of the Los Angeles Unified District's reform movement.

Every school in our district must be a safe haven for our children and that is why I brought forth a motion that any student bringing a gun to school or assaulting another person, committing serious bodily injury, shall be expelled from Los Angeles Unified District schools. This policy remains intact. Unfortunately, The Times' headline suggested that the expulsion policy was weakened by the modification that I presented to the Board of Education (Metro, Sept. 17), and this was simply not the case.

When teen-ager Mayra Rivera is late for school, it's usually because she's had trouble getting her 3-year-old son, Jaketa, dressed, fed and off to day care. Classmates Joanne Kuilan, 18, and Danielle Proctor, 17, understand: They go through the same routine with their 3-year-olds. The three Los Angeles High School seniors are in a class for young mothers and mothers-to-be that offers support so they can finish school.

Nearly one in every two high school students leaves the Los Angeles Unified School District before graduation day, a rate that is more than double the statewide average, according to a new report of dropout statistics released Wednesday by the state Department of Education. During the 1993-94 school year, 18,500 of the district's students in grades 9 through 12 left school without graduating or re-enrolling elsewhere. That translates to a four-year dropout rate of almost 44%.

She's sweet and petite, and this week she took the Academic Decathlon by storm. Dale Shuger, 17, an academic decathlete from the El Camino Real High School team, placed first overall in the Los Angeles Unified School District for her individual performance.

At Gault Street Elementary, waves of parents flow through the campus daily. Sometimes the tide is stronger, said parent center director Rosalva Waterford, but they are always there. Volunteers make copies for the teachers using one of the center's three copy machines - including the one they call la viejita (the old woman) a decades-old, yellowing behemoth that frequently gets passed over for the newer models. Parents sometimes help move classroom furniture for an activity or clean up afterward.

For the first time this year, LAUSD has prepared reports for teachers that rate their effectiveness. When I received an email saying I could now view my own personal "Average Growth over Time" report, I opened it with a combination of trepidation, resignation and indignation. First, the indignation. It is, I think, the key factor that has kept me teaching past the five-year mark, when most new teachers quit the profession. I am in my sixth year of teaching after a nearly 20-year career as a professional writer.

There's a shocking disconnect at work these days in the relationship between the public and government workers: The public is demanding greater accountability, and public employees — social workers, police, teachers, even state legislators — are finding ways to avoid it. Legislators contend that they should be allowed to conduct budget deliberations in private. Police unions are fighting forcefully to protect the names of officers involved in shootings or other uses of force.

Just shy of a year ago, the students on Granada Hills Charter High School's Academic Decathlon team told themselves that they would win a national title. It took months of practice, weekends and holidays lost, and spring break spent hunkered down in a classroom, studying guides thicker than a phone book. But in a hotel banquet hall here Saturday, the students embraced each other, their parents screamed, their coaches looked to be in a state of shock: Granada Hills was the national champion.

British chef Jamie Oliver's food revolution is giving LAUSD officials a case of indigestion. The Los Angeles Unified School District has suspended all filming of reality TV shows in district schools after a standoff with the celebrity chef, who had been filming his ABC show "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" at West Adams Preparatory High School in central Los Angeles for the last two weeks. This week the district denied Oliver's license to film at Manual Arts Senior High School in South L.A., which, like West Adams, is operated by MLA Partner Schools under a contract with LAUSD.

What we can learn Re "Who's teaching our kids?," Aug. 15 My wife and I are both retired California public school educators. We want to commend The Times for its investigation into the effectiveness of teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. You have brought much-needed light. Though our respective careers were far different — my wife taught in elementary grades; I worked in secondary grades — we often had to evaluate ourselves because there was no way to compare our performance with other teachers'.

More than 1 million low-income California children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches don't get breakfast at school even though they would qualify, and about a fifth of the schools in the state don't even offer breakfast, according to two reports from the Food Research and Action Center. California ranked 33rd in low-income student participation in the School Breakfast Program for 2008-09, the same ranking it received a year earlier. In terms of the number of schools that offer breakfast, California's ranking fell from 35th to 40th, the Washington, D.C.-based group said.

Dailey Mayo received some stunning news in the mail last week: an 85% rate increase for the long-term-care insurance he has had for 15 years from the California Public Employees' Retirement System. The retired sales manager in Pasadena said his monthly premium of nearly $400 would jump to $738, or about $8,850 annually, under this plan. "I'm 82 now and I might need this care soon," he said. "It really ticks me off that they are doing this. " More than 110,000 CalPERS policyholders are receiving similar news after the pension fund's board approved the changes late last year.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has done an admirable job of collecting useful data about its teachers ? which ones have the classroom magic that makes students learn and which ones annually let their students down. Yet it has never used that valuable information to analyze what successful teachers have in common, so that others can learn from them, or to let less effective teachers know how they're doing. For the record: This editorial says the federal Race to the Top grant program pushed states to make students' test scores count for half or more of a teacher's performance evaluation.

The price tag for a complex of schools at the site of the famed Ambassador Hotel has become the Los Angeles Unified School District's most expensive school project, now surpassing $578 million. The latest cost increase, approved Tuesday by the Board of Education, adds $6.6 million for expenses related mostly to safety and historic preservation at the complex for 4,200 students. The main campus of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will open this fall. Two small schools already operate on the back portion of the 24-acre Koreatown site.