CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 6, 2013 | By Patrick McGreevy
SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed a bill that will penalize school superintendents who fail to report to the state when teachers are disciplined or fired for misconduct. The measure was a response to a sex abuse scandal in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Other measures Brown approved - 55 in all - are aimed at providing the public with more information on local government actions and at protecting animals. The bills take effect Jan. 1. The school bill requires superintendents to report actions against instructors to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing within 30 days.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 26, 2013 | By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy isn't on the ballot Tuesday, but you'd hardly know it, based on the undercurrent of the school board election. A coalition of local organizations, wealthy donors and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have decided that the election is all about keeping Deasy on the job and accelerating the aggressive policies he's putting into place. This group has come together for the campaign through a political action committee called the Coalition for School Reform.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 9, 2012 | By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times
In the wake of this week's passage of a state tax measure, Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy said Friday he will ask the Board of Education to restore a full 180-day academic calendar and rescind all planned employee furlough days for the current school year. The success of Proposition 30 on Tuesday means that school district budgets across the state are protected from $5.4 billion in cuts that had been scheduled to take effect. Teachers union officials had called on the L.A. Unified School District to restore full pay for employees and to bring back a full school year.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 27, 2012 | By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times
As children peered at them through an elementary school fence in Cerritos on Friday, about a dozen school superintendents explained the consequences they will face if California voters fail to approve Proposition 30. In Whittier Union High School District, class sizes - some already exceeding 40 students - will continue to grow. In Inglewood Unified School District, a $30-million deficit will double and the current school year will immediately be shortened by four weeks. In ABC Unified School District, which serves mostly Artesia and Cerritos, sports, arts and after-school programs - currently unscathed by $30 million in cuts in recent years - will be pared.
NATIONAL
December 27, 2011 | By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times
Tucson's Mexican American studies program violates state law, an Arizona administrative law judge ruled Tuesday, paving the way for the program's possible demise. Judge Lewis D. Kowal affirmed a prior decision by the state's schools chief that the Tucson Unified School District's program violates a new law prohibiting divisive ethnic-studies classes. John Huppenthal, the state superintendent of public instruction, had deemed the program in violation in June. Among other things, the law bans classes primarily designed for a particular ethnic group or that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
NATIONAL
November 20, 2011 | By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times
Arizona's public schools chief had heard unsettling reports about what was being taught in the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American studies program and decided to see for himself. As he sat in on a Chicano literature class, Supt. John Huppenthal noticed an image of Che Guevera hanging on a wall and listened to a lecturer cast Benjamin Franklin as a racist. And though teacher Curtis Acosta did not directly portray Mexican Americans as an oppressed minority, he discussed educational theorist Paulo Freire and his "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," which the Tucson High Magnet School students used as a textbook.