L.A. Unified Board Will Back Classroom Breakfast Program A majority of L.A. Unified School Board members said they will vote to continue a classroom breakfast program that feeds nearly 200,000 children but was in danger of being axed after sharp criticism by the teachers union. LA Times See also: LA School Report, KPCC The Messy...

A proposed bill known as SB 441 that would tighten teacher evaluation rules statewide narrowly failed to pass the Senate Education Committee Wednesday — but it’s not completely dead yet. After hearing impassioned testimony from parents, teachers, and union representatives, the Committee deadlocked 4-4 over approval of the legislation. But the Committee also voted to...

Earlier this week, the LA Weekly honed in on the outsized influence California’s largest teachers union is perceived to have on education policy issues, including recent efforts to speed the removal of sexual predators from the classroom. “That’s how CTA infamously killed a [2012] law to fire sex-pervert teachers, SB 1530,” LA Weekly writer Matthew Mullins wrote. “A...

The LA Times editorial page has established its independence on education issues several times in recent months — through its candidate endorsements and its views on charter school accountability, teacher evaluations, the parent trigger, and teacher dismissal proposals (among several examples). So it’s all the more striking that editorial page writer Karin Klein took to the newspaper’s pages yesterday to denounce the...

A bill sponsored by State Senator Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) that would expand the current “parent trigger” law to include more of California’s lowest performing schools was scheduled for a hearing by the Assembly Education Committee earlier today. The current 2010 version of the law has a cap limiting parent trigger takeovers to 75 schools...

Over the weekend, the California Democratic Convention declined to provide exhibition space to Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst or her husband’s Stand Up nonprofit (citing space constraints), gave CTA president Dean Vogel time to deliver this fiery anti-reform speech, and passed this anti-reform resolution. Via LA Times and CTA blog.

The Sacramento-based school advocacy group StudentsFirst recently hired Fabian Nunez in an effort to beef up its advocacy efforts in California. In a telephone interview last week, Nunez gave LA School Report his take on education politics in Sacramento, recent shifts in union priorities after last year’s controversial debate over teacher dismissals, and his vision for higher-performing...

UTLA Delivers No-Confidence Vote to LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy LAUSD’s teachers union issued an overwhelming vote of no-confidence Thursday in the leadership of Superintendent John Deasy as he finishes his second year, while a rival survey released by civil rights groups showed strong support for his reform strategies and called for an even more aggressive...

Last week, the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit Vergara v. State of California, which seeks to overturn five education laws in California (seniority-based layoffs, teacher tenure, and three dismissal statutes that make firing a teacher so onerous). “This lawsuit is baseless and...

AB 375, a new bill meant to streamline teacher dismissals, could be headed for quick passage after clearing the State Assembly’s Education Committee with a 7 – 0 vote Thursday. The bill’s chance at passing is undoubtedly aided by the announcement last week that the state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, was joining...