While discussing cost-saving measures and reducing waste in LA Unified food services, some school board members said they wanted to bring back flavored milk. Superintendent John Deasy banned chocolate and strawberry milk from the school menu five years ago after the school board voted it was too sugary for students. But now LA Unified School Board President Steve...

LA Unified has so many different kinds of schools it’s hard to keep them all straight. With such varied terms as affiliated charter, independent charter, magnet school, pilot school, continuation school, option school and others, it can be a challenge to understand what they are, what they offer and how they differ. This is the...

An advisory committee studying options for LA Unified’s academic calendar are considering six different plans, and one them is a radically different approach that would shorten the summer break to five weeks and increase the winter break to seven weeks. In addition, the plan would potentially add a 20-day “winter intersession” for some students to...

That was quite a board meeting yesterday, with more emotion on display than Nixon or LBJ ever showed in announcing their decisions to leave the White House. The first wave came in The Long Goodbye to Bennett Kayser, whose bid for a second term was thwarted by a member of the group he most detests,...

In a stunning upset, Scott Schmerelson handily defeated two-term incumbent Tamar Galatzan in the race for LA Unified’s District 3 seat. Schmerelson beat Galatzan with more than 3,000 votes, 55 percent to 45 percent. “I am very happy, very excited, and I’m ready for my five-year term,” he told LA School Report late last night,...

As she arrived to the stage Monday night, Tamar Galatzan grabbed two bottles of water for the debate participants and handed one to her challenger, Scott Schmerelson, who smiled and thanked her. The gesture set the stage for the evening, as both candidates for the LA Unified District 3 seat avoided any criticism of each...

*UPDATED Scott Schmerelson says he is “feeling pretty good” these days, and the longtime LA Unified educator, counselor and principal certainly has lots of reasons for it. Schmerelson emerged from a logjam of five challengers to finish second in the March 3 school board primary election, good enough to make the May 19 runoff against District...

* UPDATED LA Unified’s election season moved into runoffs last night with no candidate in the three contested races winning a majority of votes for a board seat and the 5 1/2 year term that voters approved yesterday. A low turnout of 8.2 percent sent three incumbents — Tamar Galatzan in District 3, Bennett Kayser...

With less than 24 hours to go before the polls open, LA Unified school board candidate Carl Petersen said today that he filed several ethics complaints against Tamar Galatzan, the District 3 incumbent he is challenging in tomorrow’s elections. Petersen levied the same complaints that were filed last week with the City Ethics Commission by candidate Filiberto Gonzalez,...

One of Tamar Galatzan’s challengers in the LA Unified District 3 board race said today he has filed a complaint against her with the City Ethics Commission, charging that she improperly used her board office as part of her campaign. Filiberto Gonzalez, a former Los Angeles City planning commissioner, cited two specific instances: the use of...