LA School Report has learned that the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is at fault in an election disclosure discrepancy reported here earlier today. According to the Commission, due to human error, the City Ethics site did not make public independent expenditures (IEs) made by the teachers union political arm, UTLA-PACE, for LAUSD school board...

LA School Report has learned that the teachers union’s political arm, UTLA-PACE, has sent a direct mail piece on behalf of a Westside District 4 candidate, Steve Zimmer, in what appears to be its first election expenditure. The mailer is notable because UTLA-PACE is expected to spend big on behalf of UTLA-backed school board candidates, but...

On Wednesday, the Coalition for School Reform launched a campaign ad in support of School Board President Monica Garcia, the District 2 candidate who is one of UTLA’s top targets in the March 5 election. The announcement says that the ad will begin airing immediately.  This is the Coalition’s second TV ad. No word yet on...

Over the weekend, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) Director of Communications Suzanne Spurgeon emailed us a statement about our Friday story on how UTLA has been reporting and spending its money so far in the LAUSD School Board campaign: “To our knowledge PACE has reported expenditures in a timely and proper manner. If there have...

According to new documents unearthed by LA School Report (but not otherwise available online), the political action arm of United Teachers Los Angeles, called UTLA-PACE, has amassed a war chest of $671,000 and begun spending funds on polling and consulting. However, UTLA-PACE has yet to deem any of its campaign spending as “independent expenditures,” which must be...

The latest campaign and independent expenditure (IE) committee disclosures are being released today, January 24th, but you won’t find anything there from one of the city’s most powerful IE committees, UTLA-PACE. Why not? It’s because there are two different types of IE committees functioning in city-wide and LAUSD Board races —  ‘general purpose committees,’ and...

Semi-annual financial disclosure forms for independent expenditure (IE) committees aren’t due to the City Ethics Commission until January 31. However, some information can be obtained from the City Ethics Commission in between these reports. For example, the Coalition for School Reform  — a group of advocates including (but not limited to) charter school proponents — raised...

SEIU Local 99 has endorsed Antonio Sanchez for school board in District 6, which covers the East San Fernando Valley, according to a longtime politico. The endorsement isn’t a huge surprise since Sanchez, a former employee of the LA County Federation of Labor, was always expected to be a union-friendly candidate. In addition to Sanchez, the...

As the 2013 race for three LAUSD School Board seats heats up, so will the political fundraising that pays for the candidates’ campaigns. Just as they have in recent elections, independent expenditure (IE) committees are again likely to eclipse direct donations to candidates’ campaigns. At least one IE committee is ahead of the game: UTLA-PACE,...