*UPDATED The revised budget is in the hands of the LA Unified Board of Education, but the public has a final opportunity tomorrow to weigh in on how the district’s $7 billion budget will be spent. The board has set a limit of 30 speakers to address the six members for two minutes each, to...

An open letter to the Los Angeles Unified school board from five district students: Dear board members: We are students who live in South Los Angeles and attend South L.A. High Schools. One of us wakes up early every morning to take two buses to attend Hamilton High School in West L.A. so that she...

More than 40 education and community groups signed a full-page ad that ran in today’s Los Angeles Times, urging the LA Unified school board to provide more support for high needs students in the up-coming budget. The ad appears a day before a board meeting when issues of the budget will be a large part of...

It was “pencils down” day yesterday, for the members of the Parent Advisory Committee, who completed their first opportunity to weigh in on LA Unified’s Local Control and Accountability Plan, the so-called LCAP required of Gov. Jerry Brown‘s new Local Control Funding Formula. The 47 parents and guardians selected to give feedback, have had two...

Community groups big and small, have responded collectively to the extra $332 million coming into the district via the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), Governor Jerry Brown‘s signature K-through-12 education initiative. For now, only a few schools have complete autonomy in deciding how the money should be used although more will gain the freedom over the next...

As if this wasn’t a busy enough time of year for charter schools, they now have an added “to-do” on their list of state mandated documents to submit before the end of the year. Every charter school in the district — and that includes 52 affiliated and more than 200 independent schools — must craft...

The battle to influence the Los Angeles Unified School board on how to spend Governor Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula budget boost and statewide tax revenues for education continues to rage on. Parents, educators and community organizers rallied outside of LA Unified headquarters today before a special school board meeting primarily focussed on...

A series of meetings are scheduled to help LA Unified parents and other community members learn about the new Local Control Funding Formula, the state’s new funding stream. A coalition of advocacy groups known as CLASS, as well as LAUSD board members are holding community meetings to help the public understand the changes. Below is...

With new education tax dollars coming in, LAUSD is quickly assembling a 47-member Parent Advisory Committee as part of its Local Control Accountability Plan, which represents the district’s spending priorities. For parents there’s a two-step process for participating. A local School Site Council identifies interested parents as  potential candidates. Then each council nominates one parent of a “low...