School System

Los Angeles schools will remove high-sugar chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk from their lunch and breakfast menus after food activists campaigned for the change, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced this week. Deasy revealed his intent, which will require approval by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, during an appearance with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Tuesday night. The policy change is part of a carefully negotiated happy ending between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Oliver.

Cathie Black, the high-profile magazine executive hand-picked by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to run the nation's largest school system, resigned Thursday after three tumultuous months on the job. The departure — Bloomberg said it was by mutual agreement — marked one of the more embarrassing episodes of the billionaire's three terms in office. Bloomberg, heralded by himself and others as a manager's manager who had brought business discipline to government, installed Black with virtually no consultation or any sense of political support.

I'm sure glad I don't live in the grown up world, thought Savannah, as she trudged to the bus stop. It was only Tuesday but it felt like Monday all over again. Savannah had already dropped her books all over the place, and when she went to dive for them couldn't get up. That's how slippery her winter parka was. Before that, she had missed breakfast. And before that, she found her homework eaten by the family's dog Nani. Of course, Nani was just being a big puppy. But how had she reached Savannah's home work?

Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef who is beating the drums for a school lunch revolution, received a warm reception this weekend from hundreds of the people who make and serve food to children every day. It's the Los Angeles Unified School District that isn't so welcoming. "I'm going to be honest. I'm actually petrified," Oliver said as he started his keynote address Saturday at the annual meeting of the California School Nutrition Assn. at the Pasadena Convention Center. Perhaps he feared the "lunch ladies" might not be happy to hear from the man who clashed with their colleagues in Huntington, W.Va.

The Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to vote Tuesday to appoint John Deasy as the next superintendent of the nation's second-largest school district, sources said Thursday. Deasy would replace Ramon C. Cortines, 78, who announced last year that he would retire this spring from the system he has headed since 2008. No Los Angeles Unified School District officials or administrators were willing to publicly discuss Deasy's presumed hiring. Employees said they had no authorization to do so, and elected officials said it would be improper to discuss the board's private deliberations.

Local school officials reluctantly allowed a reality television show onto campuses with promises of remodeling, then got stuck with a substandard paint job at one school and at another an embarrassing made-for-TV "reenactment" of an event that never occurred. Some of the work at the two Los Angeles schools went well or at least did no harm. And "School Pride" still has local fans, especially because it inspired community volunteerism and school spirit. Still, some in the Los Angeles Unified School District are annoyed, at the least because the school system is spending more than $100,000 to repaint Hollenbeck Middle School, east of downtown.

Calling the status quo "morally inexcusable" and "economically indefensible," President Obama defended his administration's sweeping education initiative Thursday before an audience that has been among the most skeptical of the plan — the National Urban League. "Education is an economic issue — if not the economic issue of our time," Obama said at the organization's centennial gathering in Washington. "We've got an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind."

Amid persistent budget woes and increasing political pressure, Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines confirmed Thursday, his 78th birthday, that he plans to step down next spring as head of the nation's second-largest school system. The news was not unexpected: Cortines had said he expected to serve two to three years when he took the job in December 2008, but this week he became somewhat more specific. Cortines, whose high energy and endurance frequently outlasts that of his staff, had talked recently of being tired and said the political intrigues and public battles sometimes get to him: "Yes, I get frustrated.

While the Obama administration, with its federal Race to the Top program, is setting up a host of new rules for schools, five large urban school districts have raised achievement and closed achievement gaps using approaches that make such obvious sense, it would amaze parents to know that these aren't the norm everywhere. The Broad Prize for Urban Education is awarded to large school districts that show the most progress. I had the opportunity to closely observe the innovations at five winning districts during the four years I spent working for the Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, overseeing the process for selecting winners.

The parents I met on 104th Street in Watts are immigrants from Mexico, for the most part, but they're well established in Los Angeles. They own pickup trucks and vans, and many proudly claim to be either legal residents or naturalized U.S. citizens. Even though Spanish is their first language, most have lived here a decade or so and are fairly fluent in English. One aspect of U.S. culture, however, remains a great mystery to them: the school system. "In Durango I learned my times tables by the time I was in third grade," Gerardo Jasso, a 43-year-old metal polisher told me, describing his childhood in northern Mexico.