*Updated Sept. 27: After today’s first mediation session, LA Unified announced that the next session is set for Oct. 3. LA Unified sweetened its salary offer to the teachers union just before Thursday’s first mediation session, but it did not back down on teacher quality demands — including a call for a new category in...

As LA Unified and its teachers union enter into mediation this week and the union prepares for a strike, their differences over how teachers are evaluated could be harder to resolve than how much pay raises will be. The district wants to add a new category of teacher ratings, called highly effective, as part of...

As the Los Angeles teachers union is poised to strike amid stalled contract negotiations, LA Unified’s new superintendent, Austin Beutner, held his first big policy speech Thursday before about 100 parents in the library of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Beutner outlined what needs to change in the nearly 570,000-student district, as well as...

LA Unified board members were jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out. It got worse this Tuesday, when she came back and brought a top state official with the...

*Updated Aug. 27 As night drew near last Tuesday, after a drawn-out and divisive four-hour debate on how to replace a disgraced board member, a bombshell was dropped at school board members’ feet. District finances are of such great concern that the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s chief financial officer showed up unannounced to...

Los Angeles’s Jim Blew was confirmed Tuesday by the U.S. Senate as the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development. The vote was 50-49. He was nominated last September. Blew, who was educated in LA Unified schools, has been serving as the acting secretary of the department’s office of innovation and improvement....

Like the graduation mortarboards of June, 2018 is flying by. Catch up with the best of the year so far with our top nine stories. (For you math geeks, that’s half the year of ‘18.) Also spin through some of our favorites from our new feature this year, Parent Voices. THE TOP 9 1. LAUSD’s interim...

Updated June 15 About one-fourth of LA Unified schools have just won a coveted freedom: the right to hire the best teacher for the job. However, the majority of Los Angeles schools are still shackled by a longtime districtwide policy that forces principals to hire from a “must-place” list of “displaced” teachers. But that could...

As LA Unified board members thanked Benjamin Holtzman for his service this school year as Student Board Member, Holtzman introduced his replacement: Tyler Okeke. Here are a few things to know about Tyler, who starts his new post in August. High school: Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy, which at Tuesday’s board meeting was renamed after one of the...