CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 14, 2011 | By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to avoid ticketing tardy students who are on their way to school, lawyers and advocates for students announced Thursday. The tickets, which carry steep fines, are exactly the wrong method for achieving better attendance, said those involved. Under new and "clarified" procedures agreed to by the LAPD at the request of advocates for students, truancy sweeps will no longer occur during the first hour of classes. And daytime curfew sweeps cannot be conducted except in response to suspected criminal activity by youths in the sweep area.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 6, 2011 | By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
Scores in the culminating Super Quiz contest of the 2011 Academic Decathlon were so close in both Los Angeles Unified and Los Angeles County school districts Saturday that at least a dozen schools were in striking distance of the regional titles. Among L.A. Unified Schools, Granada Hills Charter High and Marshall High tied for first place honors with scores of 57. San Fernando High finished second, with 49 points, and Canoga Park High and Franklin High tied for third place with 48 points.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 20, 2009 | By Jason Felch, Jessica Garrison and Jason Song
Altair Maine said he was so little supervised in his first few years of teaching at North Hollywood High School that he could "easily have shown a movie in class every day and earned tenure nonetheless." Before second-grade teacher Kimberly Patterson received tenure and the ironclad job protections it provides, she said, "my principal never set foot in my classroom while I was teaching." And when Virgil Middle School teacher Roberto Gonzalez came up for tenure, he discovered there was no evaluation for him on file.
OPINION
September 14, 2004 | Richard L. Hasen
There are many nightmare scenarios out there about what could happen on election day. An electoral college tie. An electronic voting glitch in a state that has moved to a new voting system. A call for a recount in a state like Ohio that still uses punch cards. A disruption by a terrorist group. Thinking about such scenarios is fair game after the 2000 debacle, in which the outcome was decided in mid-December after intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.
OPINION
April 11, 2004
Imagine a system that determines where a person is placed based on skin color or gang ties or territorial lines. Sound like what happens in the state prison system? It also happens in the high schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District. When the Los Angeles school system's busing czar tries to find space for kids crowded out of their neighborhood high schools, he must consider more than bus routes and classroom seats.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 1, 2002 | SOLOMON MOORE and ERIKA HAYASAKI, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Gloria Vasquez wakes and dresses her 10-year-old daughter Yvonne each morning, starting with a fresh diaper. She spoon-feeds breakfast to the girl, then takes her to the Salvin School for disabled children in South Los Angeles, where Yvonne is being trained in basic life skills. She never learned to read. Milo Howell is an example of a different type of special education student in the Los Angeles Unified School District. At age 8, he started classes at a school for the blind.