* Updated Feb. 28 The LA Unified school board is moving forward quickly to find a new superintendent and has set a March 14 deadline for applications.  The board will start reviewing applications after the search firm of Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates has vetted the applicants and expects to make its selection in April....

Maria Ruiz worried about her three sons’ education in Boyle Heights, a low-income Los Angeles neighborhood where she felt the public schools were dangerous and neglected. But when the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools took over leadership of her sons’ low-performing campuses, she witnessed a transformation — in her boys as well as their schools....

Joan Sullivan walked into a tough crowd at 20th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles in May 2016. Three dozen teachers and staff in yellow spirit shirts stood at the back of the room, most of them with their arms crossed, while in the audience nearly 200 parents with their children sat divided, holding signs...

*Updated Feb. 15 Despite parents’ pleas to deal now with a coming deficit that could require huge cuts, a narrow majority of LA Unified’s school board on Tuesday approved a new contract that commits the district to paying for its employees’ generous health benefits at current levels for the next three years. The contract passed 4-2, with...

As LA Unified continues to lose 12,000 students every year, administrators will be notified of expected job losses, restrictions could be made on how to spend one-time funds coming from the state, and labor partners will be called on to be part of the solution. Next year’s projected enrollment decline was reported Tuesday by Chief Financial...

* Updated Feb. 9 Kids rarely stepped foot in the library at Washington Elementary in Compton. “It was dusty and damp in there, it was not very welcoming for kids at all,” Principal Diana Phillips said. “We had a lot of very old books that children were not interested in and none of the modern...

In the context of the search for its next superintendent, LA Unified’s school board is asking existential questions about how hard it should be pushing to disrupt the status quo in a system that serves more than 700,000 students. While none of the conversations came particularly full-circle in a special meeting of the board on...

  * Updated Jan. 25 The California governor’s new budget proposes giving more to schools than ever before — $78.3 billion — but it’s not going to keep LA Unified from driving off its fiscal cliff in three years, according to the district’s chief financial officer. With steady enrollment declines and crushing pension debt, the...

A tentative agreement on health benefits marks the first time an LA Unified labor contract has directly taken on the district’s soaring healthcare costs. But watchdogs say the deal doesn’t go far enough in tackling the district’s standing debt — and some school board members warn it may actually make the next round of negotiations...