CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 28, 2010 | By Howard Blume
L.A. school officials unveiled a more user-friendly school "report card" Wednesday that is more focused on information than public relations. The new product updates an effort that began last year, when Supt. Ramon C. Cortines sought to make school performance more transparent, even when the data revealed disappointing results. Last year's report cards, however, were difficult to read and had not yet incorporated features such as an annual survey of parents, students and school staff.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 27, 2010 | By Howard Blume
So you think you can run a Los Angeles school? Make your case. You've got 10 minutes. Would-be school operators are taking part in a kind of Los Angeles Unified School District reality contest, presenting proposals this month at forums on campuses across the district. It's the next step in an unfolding process through which groups inside and outside the system are bidding to operate 12 low-performing schools and 18 new campuses, serving some 40,000 students. The Board of Education approved the strategy in August, and the winners for each school will be chosen before March.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 14, 2010 | By Howard Blume
The Los Angeles school district paid $200 million more in salaries than it budgeted last year even as it laid off 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees, according to an internal audit. Auditors so far have unearthed no wrongdoing, but officials are puzzled, concerned and perhaps even a little embarrassed. "We've been in the process of cleaning it up," said L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who said his staff is verifying the size of the discrepancy and will, over time, determine how much relates to incomplete accounting and how much to something more serious.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 12, 2010 | By Jason Song
The Los Angeles city school district on Monday began receiving applications from inside and outside groups seeking to take over 30 new or struggling campuses. Groups that filed letters of intent to apply for the schools in the fall had to file their requests electronically before midnight tonight. The district is scheduled to announce how many applications they received today. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education voted in August to allow outside operators, including charter schools, to apply for control of 18 new and 12 low-performing campuses.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 10, 2010 | By Mitchell Landsberg, Doug Smith and Howard Blume
Over the last decade, a quiet revolution took root in the nation's second-largest school district. Fueled by money and emboldened by clout from some of the city's most powerful figures, charter schools began a period of explosive growth that has challenged the status quo in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Today, Los Angeles is home to more than 160 charter schools, far more than any other U.S. city. Charter enrollment is up nearly 19% this year from last, while enrollment in traditional L.A. public schools is down.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 2, 2010 | By Howard Blume
A plan to let outside groups bid for control of dozens of long-struggling and new local campuses has unleashed a formidable competitor: Groups of teachers from inside the Los Angeles Unified School District are vying to take charge of their schools. At every location up for bid -- 12 existing schools and 18 new campuses -- teams of teachers and the L.A. teachers union are working nights and weekends to decide what to offer students and parents and what they would require of them and of themselves.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 28, 2009 | By Howard Blume
Two former Los Angeles teachers face a court order to return salary overpayments of more than $148,000, part of an increasingly aggressive push by the Los Angeles Unified School District to retrieve $9.4 million from employees who were inadvertently caught up in its malfunctioning payroll system. The judgments were approved this month in Los Angeles Superior Court against Adalberto Castro, who allegedly received an unanticipated windfall of $96,482, and Christina Garcia, who allegedly was overpaid $52,345.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 22, 2009 | By Howard Blume
The union representing Los Angeles teachers filed a lawsuit Monday to block the potential hand-over of new campuses to charter schools under the district's groundbreaking and controversial school-reform strategy. Charter-school advocates defended the plan's legality as did the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Board of Education approved a resolution in August to turn over 12 long-struggling campuses and 18 new ones to bidders from inside or outside the district, including some charter operators.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 20, 2009 | By Jason Felch, Jessica Garrison and Jason Song
Altair Maine said he was so little supervised in his first few years of teaching at North Hollywood High School that he could "easily have shown a movie in class every day and earned tenure nonetheless." Before second-grade teacher Kimberly Patterson received tenure and the ironclad job protections it provides, she said, "my principal never set foot in my classroom while I was teaching." And when Virgil Middle School teacher Roberto Gonzalez came up for tenure, he discovered there was no evaluation for him on file.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 18, 2009 | By Jason Song and Jason Felch
Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines ordered administrators Thursday to weed out ineffective new teachers before they become permanent, acknowledging that the nation's second-largest school system has largely failed to adequately evaluate teacher performance. "This district can be rightly criticized for the promotion of ineffective teachers over the years. That is about to change," Cortines said. "We do not owe poor performers a job." Taking aim at weak probationary teachers now could spare the district from firing others who are more effective but have slightly less experience next summer when there will probably be another round of layoffs.