LA Unified officials are close to clearing a two-year backlog of assessments aimed at identifying thousands of students who would qualify for the highly-prized Gifted and Talented Education program. Why has it taken so long? For one reason, says the district, parents of many gifted students proved they, too, are gifted — at cheating. For...

It turns out LA Unified’s money woes aren’t so bad — for now, anyway. Shortly before the end of the calendar year, Superintendent Ramon Cortines and other district officials were forecasting a deficit of $320 million, sometimes closer to $350 million. But that was before Governor Jerry Brown proposed his new budget. Now, the district’s...

The LA Unified school board got a first look at the district’s financial future, and what members saw wasn’t pretty. Yet, it wasn’t ugly enough to stop the board from approving millions of dollars in new expenditures. Like a town crier, Superintendent Ramon Cortines has been warning anyone willing to listen that the district is...

The Los Angeles Unified School District is losing an average of 2.6 percent of students attending traditional public schools — that’s about 56,000 kids — and it’s costing the district hundreds of millions dollars each year. By the current formula, which calculates how much money goes to districts based on student attendance, about $292.4 million will...

One parent wanted more counselors. Another wanted more security personnel. A student came forward with a friend and said, “You’re spending all that money on iPads. We’d prefer you spend it on nurses and librarians and can you please fix the bathrooms.” This was Tuesday night, in the auditorium of Burroughs Middle School in Hancock...

Is the Los Angeles Unified School Board finally coming to terms with harsh fiscal realities of a post-recession world? That’s what it seemed like yesterday, when the members met for one of the shortest meetings in recent memory, only four hours. A combination of declining enrollment, federal cuts in special education and this year’s Federal sequestration...