School District

A 15-year-old Saratoga girl who killed herself after photos circulated of her alleged sexual assault was "tormented" and "tortured" in the days before her death, her family's attorney said Friday. On Thursday, authorities announced three 16-year-old boys had been arrested on suspicion of sexually battering Audrie Pott, a Saratoga Union High School sophomore, according to reports. An attorney representing Pott's family told The Times the alleged attack occurred at what the teenager thought would be a "small little gathering" at a friend's house last fall.

A school district in southeastern Los Angeles County is illegally diluting the voting clout of Latinos and barring them from elective office by using an at-large electoral system for school board races, according to a lawsuit filed this week. No Latino has been elected to the seven-member board in the ABC Unified School District since 1997, although the ethnic group makes up nearly one-fourth of adults of voting age, according to the lawsuit filed by MALDEF, a leading Latino legal civil rights organization, and the Los Angeles law firm of Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho. The district encompasses 30 schools in Artesia, Cerritos, Hawaiian Gardens and portions of Lakewood, Long Beach and Norwalk.

A 16-year-old high school student was arrested in Burbank on Tuesday night after allegedly threatening on Twitter to shoot another student at his school, police said. Authorities received several calls about the alleged threat about 6 p.m. Tuesday, Burbank Police Sgt. Darin Ryburn said. One of the callers identified the alleged suspect and victim both as John Burroughs High School students. Though the alleged threat did not specifically name the alleged victim, the caller "knew who the suspect was talking about," Ryburn said.

A parade of Atlanta educators trooped to the county jail beginning in the early hours of Tuesday morning and surrendered to officials on criminal charges stemming what is believed to be the biggest testing scandal in American education. By early morning, at least four of the 35 teachers, principals and school officials had turned themselves in and were expected to post bonds ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million. All were named in a 65-count indictment released last week by Fulton County Dist.

The Corona-Norco Unified School District was named as a finalist Thursday for the prestigious Broad Prize, which honors academic excellence by minority and low-income students in urban districts across the nation. The Riverside County district is one of four finalists for the prize to be announced in September. The winning district will receive $550,000 in college scholarships for seniors in the class of 2013. The other three will each receive $150,000 in scholarships. The other finalists are the San Diego Unified School District, Houston Independent School District and Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina.

On Thursday, when both Michigan and Michigan State played in the NCAA tournament, apparently a few too many students in one Michigan school district tried to watch the games on their schools' computers. The basketball craze in the Genesee Intermediate School District reportedly prevented some students from being able to access online instructional resources. Workers with Genesee Network for Education Telecommunication, or GenNET, were flooded with complaints, leading the school district to block access to college basketball games over its computers.

SACRAMENTO - California voters have yet to strongly embrace Gov. Jerry Brown's controversial plan to shift money from rich schools to poor ones, an ominous sign as he works to win support for the idea from skeptical lawmakers and the state's powerful teachers unions. A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found that 50% of respondents agreed with such a move, to help school districts that serve low-income children and English-language learners. But a significant minority, 39%, opposed the plan, which is embedded in the governor's budget blueprint and is the centerpiece of his education agenda.

A San Bernardino County school district allegedly discriminated against gay and lesbian students, including its apparent refusal to allow girls to wear tuxedos to the upcoming prom. In a letter Monday from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Hesperia Unified School District was notified that it faces legal action. The ACLU typically warns government agencies of impending litigation to give them time to make changes. The letter makes specific allegations against the faculty and administration of Sultana High School.

The boisterous applause of hundreds of admirers echoed through Palisades Charter High School's newly refurbished drama classroom on Saturday as Rose Gilbert steadied herself in a walker and made her way to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its entrance. The diminutive English teacher of 63 years smiled at the crush of people around her, many of them former students from 18 to 66 years of age, and said: "Gilbert Hall is now open. " In recent years, Gilbert, who retired three weeks ago at age 94, achieved celebrity status for being the oldest full-time teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and one of the oldest in the nation.

About half of the schools in the country have been labeled "failing," thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind Act and its rigid, unhelpful measurements. We've called on Congress for years now to overhaul the law, and in the absence of any action, the Obama administration has begun offering waivers to states and some individual school districts that meet its definition of progress. Someone had to step in. Under No Child Left Behind, a school is labeled as failing if it does not bring students up to an arbitrary level of proficiency - even if it is a formerly underperforming school that has succeeded in making major improvements and is moving forward.