Los Angeles Unified School District

A groundbreaking plan to open 51 new Los Angeles schools and 200 existing ones to possible outside control has Randy Palisoc feeling as if salvation is just steps away. A new $54-million campus he covets is rising a block from where his award-winning charter school operates in a rented church. Palisoc is among many with big dreams since the Los Angeles Board of Education approved its landmark school control resolution last week. The management of about a fourth of all district schools could be up for grabs.

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday it is canceling the bulk of its summer school programs, the latest in a statewide wave of cutbacks expected to leave hundreds of thousands of students struggling for classes. The reductions, which will force many parents to scramble for child care, are the most tangible effect of the multibillion-dollar state financial cuts to education. Community colleges also have announced summer program cancellations.

Nearly 300,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students are eligible for free tutoring from private agencies during the upcoming school year, district officials said Thursday. Students who attend one of 173 low-performing schools under the No Child Left Behind Act and are eligible for free or discount lunches can sign up for federally funded supplemental tutoring during the 2005-06 school year.

Declining enrollment has prompted the Los Angeles Unified School District to scale back its $20-billion school construction and remodeling program sought to relieve overcrowding and end involuntary busing. The building program, which is paid for by four bond issues approved by local voters and state funds, is believed to be the largest public works project in the nation.

In the weeks leading up to the launch of a new payroll system, Los Angeles Unified School District officials had plenty of warning that the $95-million technology project would have serious problems. Critical hardware had failed numerous times. Flawed data collected over decades proved difficult to clean up and input into the new system. Payroll clerks complained that training had fallen far short -- more than 60 schools didn't have a single staff member who'd received any training.

Change is coming to high school sports in the City Section, and it's reflected in the demographic transformation taking place in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Thirty years ago, Canoga Park didn't have a soccer team and its student body was 65% Caucasian. Last year, the soccer-playing sons of immigrants from El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia helped Canoga Park finish 24-0-1 and earn recognition as the nation's No. 1 boys' soccer team.

A key Los Angeles school district committee has endorsed plans for the San Fernando Valley's first charter middle school, as backers dropped a Pacoima site in favor of more spacious quarters in Lake View Terrace. The 158-page proposal will be presented at a hearing this afternoon at the district's downtown headquarters.

News that a close affiliate of the company managing the Los Angeles Unified School District's massive bond construction program has been fined for laundering campaign contributions brought demands Wednesday for the district to hire an independent inspector general to investigate such problems.

An unprecedented 32 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were recognized as 2006 California Distinguished Schools on Tuesday, almost triple the district's record number in 2004. Twenty-five are Title I schools, which receive federal assistance and enroll students living below poverty levels. "To have 32 Distinguished Schools in this district is a real milestone," Los Angeles Schools Supt. Roy Romer said at a news conference.

No teachers will lose their jobs this school year, Los Angeles Unified School District officials announced Friday, a calculated gamble that will preserve classroom continuity in the short term but lead to a larger deficit next year. The decision reverses course from last week, when the school board voted to give Supt. Ramon C. Cortines the authority to send pink slips to nearly 2,300 instructors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.