School District

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.

After 39 years of working in the Los Angeles Unified School District as a teacher, coach and athletic administrator, Barbara Fiege says she will retire on June 30, 2013. The Los Angeles high school sports scene won't be the same. She is the second-longest-serving commissioner of the City Section and the only woman to head the sports program of the nation's second-largest school district. Fiege took over from Hal Harkness in 1993, when there were 49 LAUSD high schools. Now there are more than 130. She's the one who has been the enforcer of rules and regulations at a time of growing pressure to win. So it comes as no surprise that as the breaking of rules has increased, her role has become more controversial.

SAN DIEGO - The days when auto shop was a major part of the high school curriculum have long since been consigned to revivals and reruns of the musical "Grease. " But auto shop's long skid in the face of budget cuts and a shift toward college-prep classes may be reversing. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the San Diego Unified School District, where officials have built automotive program facilities at three high schools and hope to upgrade shops at two other schools if voters approve a bond issue next month.

How to measure the worth of Los Angeles math teacher Kyle Hunsberger? The teacher at Johnnie Cochran Jr. Middle School works 60-hour weeks, constantly searches for new teaching ideas and makes every minute count in class. During a fast-paced review of square roots and perfect numbers, he punctuated explanations with jokes, questioned his students to check their understanding and engaged them in group work. His principal, Scott Schmerelson, praises him as a leader who heads the math department and started a campus program to give struggling students extra help.

Pairs of eyes peered through the dark Corona High School auditorium at a projector screen hanging above a stage flanked by flags and plastic plants. About 60 Corona-Norco Unified School District teachers and administrators gathered Tuesday morning to watch a live stream of the unveiling of this year's Broad Prize for Urban Education. For the first time, the 53,000-student, largely Latino and low-income school district in the Inland Empire was a finalist for the prestigious national education competition.

GUADALUPE, Calif. - Vacant, century-old storefronts stand as bricks-and-mortar tombstones in this once-booming little farm town on California's Highway 1, where flatbeds piled with strawberries rumble by, rarely having to hit the brakes at crosswalks. Thrashed by the recession, officials here ran out of ways to cut expenses or boost tax revenue. So the town named after the patron saint of Mexico is throwing a Hail Mary. The mayor and City Council crafted a Nov. 6 ballot measure to change the city's name to Guadalupe Beach - even though the Pacific Ocean is nearly five miles to the west.

An adult male forces a teenage girl to bend over and take a paddling on her buttocks, and nobody is calling the cops? No, because in this case it's at a Texas school and involves an administrator and a girl who cheated. The mother in Springtown, Texas, complained -- as did another mother whose daughter spoke  disrespectfully to the assistant principal, who then spanked her with a paddle -- saying that this was against school rules. Kids are only supposed to be hit by an authority figure of the same sex, they say. Men hit too hard, they say. Other than that, the paddling appears to have been OK with them.

Four teenagers who say they were sexually hazed by soccer players at La Puente High School filed legal claims against the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District on Thursday. The claims allege that the attacks were captured on cellphone videos, that a coach knew about the hazing and that older players targeted younger players. The claims, precursors to civil lawsuits, allege that the coach "supported and conspired and abetted with students. " Four senior members of the soccer team have been arrested on suspicion of assault and the soccer coach has been placed on leave.

The former superintendent of the El Paso Independent School District was sentenced to 42 months in prison on charges he was involved in a conspiracy to inflate the district's test scores, officials said. Lorenzo Garcia was sentenced in federal court on Friday after pleading guilty in June to two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. In addition to the testing scandal, Garcia pleaded guilty to a fraud count in connection with the award of a no-bid contract of $450,000 to a lover.

Kent Taylor, superintendent of education in southern Kern County, was selected Wednesday to lead the Inglewood school district - the first major move by the state after its takeover of the financially troubled district. Before his Kern County stint, Taylor worked as a teacher, principal, administrator and school board member in several Southern California districts, mostly in the San Bernardino area. He grew up in Inglewood and graduated from Inglewood High in 1982, facts he emphasized repeatedly during a Wednesday news conference.