Los Angeles’ new school superintendent, John Deasy, says one of his top goals is to persuade middle-class families, including Jewish parents, to return to the Los Angeles public schools. “It’s one of the major projects I have to deliver,” he said.
It’s been dark for almost five hours, the city has slowed, and even the 101 Freeway is sparse and quiet. Steve Zimmer has just wrapped his last appointment, but rushing home seems foolish when a rare sit-down dinner is an option. Most days Zimmer hardly notices how alone he is, because he never stops working.
Zachary Weiss, an eighth-grade algebra teacher at Luther Burbank Learning Complex, last week was named a 2011-2012 LAUSD Teacher of the Year, along with 13 other district teachers at the elementary through high school level.
Much of the recent history of the Los Angeles Unified School District is also part of the past of Tamar Galatzan, who now sits on the governing board of that giant bureaucracy of a school district.
Phil Donney, who graduated in 2006 from Hamilton High School\’s Music Academy, home to many Jewish students as well as talented students throughout the city, has created this video in the face of huge looming cuts that threaten the very existence of the LAUSD public school Magnet programs, particularly the music programs like Hamilton\’s.
Los Angeles public schools could be poised for revolution due to a controversial state law gaining momentum locally. The landmark “Parent Trigger” law, passed by the California government in January 2010, grants parents at failing schools the power to force their district to make sweeping changes in a bid to improve school performance. Petitions are now under way at several Southland schools, but the law remains little known among many Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) families who could benefit from it most, according to Los Angeles education reform advocate Larry Sand.
This summer was going to be the one — the one when Prissi Cohen’s daughter, Tillie, would finally get to enroll with a friend in a late-summer overnight session at Camp Ramah. But now Cohen’s not so sure. If Tillie, 10, winds up going to a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) middle school in the fall, she would have to be at her desk two days before camp ends.
“Shame, shame, shame! It’s time to go humane!”\n\nProtestors circled for an hour near the pet store Barkworks at the Westside Pavilion shopping center in West Los Angeles on April 17. Among the protest participants were 60 LAUSD high school students involved with YouTHink, an education program of the Zimmer Children’s Museum, as well as representatives of the Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS), a national nonprofit that investigates pet shops, puppy mills and breeders.
Along with homework time, crafts and supervised games, grade school students in several Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools this spring are getting something different at their after-school programs: spiritual awareness.
\” , , , Forces that have been impatient with the pace of reform feel that they have won a victory, because they were never entirely sold on Superintendent Brewer, although he vigorously defends his record . . .\”
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