Los Angeles Unified School District

Los Angeles voters will be asked in June to approve a temporary $100-per-parcel annual tax to help fund city schools, but Supt. Ramon C. Cortines warned Tuesday that the increase still would not be enough to head off bigger class sizes, teacher layoffs and, possibly, a shorter school year. Facing a projected $640-million budget shortfall, officials said the parcel tax would yield $95.2 million annually for the four years it would be in effect. The school board needed to act quickly, Cortines said, so the money could offset some cutbacks for the upcoming school year.

Marshall High School beat out 63 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the annual Academic Decathlon, district officials announced Thursday night. Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic was the highest-scoring individual student, with 8,933 points. The decathlon tests students' knowledge in a variety of areas, including history. This year's focus was the French Revolution. Marshall first won a national championship in 1987. Since then, the district has won 15 state and 10 national competitions.

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 City Section high school sports program is facing $1.4 million in budget cuts for the next school year, Barbara Fiege, commissioner of athletics for the section, said Monday. The reduction in funding for athletics, which represents a 20% cut, is part of a wide-scale contraction required by the Los Angeles Unified School District because of losses in state funding. "The reality is, because of the economy and the budget restraints of the district, we can't avoid it," Fiege said.

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.