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Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed into law a measure ... addressing controversy over an anti-abortion demonstration. Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) said he wrote the measure in response to a March 2003 incident in which graphic images of an aborted fetus were mounted on a vehicle and driven past a middle school in Rancho Palos Verdes. "Because of the disturbing nature of the photographs, some students at the scene became angry, some began to cry...’’ Mendoza said. The bill was signed three years after a federal court found that the 1st Amendment rights of anti-abortion activists were violated when they...

Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn't finish all of it — largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop. Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn't have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. "They're always there and they're always loud," he said, explaining his challenges with homework. The nation's second-largest school system has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10% of a student's grade. Critics — mostly teachers —...

The L.A. school board's decision to stop serving flavored milks on campuses is just the beginning. A menu overhaul is underway that will mean fewer meals that resemble fast food and more vegetarian offerings. Spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce and California sushi rolls, along with many ethnic foods, are to be added. Corn dogs, chicken nuggets and other breaded items are out, said Dennis Barrett, food services director. Megan Bomba, a project coordinator with Occidental College's Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, agreed with the move, saying "the meal needs to be better, not [that] we need to keep chocolate...

The Los Angeles school district will hold a shortened day of classes on May 13 to accommodate a planned teachers union protest without interrupting standardized testing on most campuses. Dismissal time will vary from school to school but could be up to several hours earlier than normal. Schools will be required to make up the lost time from the shortened day later in the year, according to Los Angeles Unified School District officials. The teachers' demonstration is aimed at encouraging state legislators to place tax extensions on the fall ballot to provide continued funding to school districts. L.A. Unified faces...

Los Angeles schools will remove high-sugar chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk from their lunch and breakfast menus after food activists campaigned for the change, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced this week. Deasy revealed his intent, which will require approval by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, during an appearance with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Tuesday night. The policy change is part of a carefully negotiated happy ending between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Oliver. The chef's confrontations with the school system became a main theme in the current season of the TV reality...

About 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year, even as layoffs are considered because of a budget gap. For seven years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits. His job is to do nothing. Every school day, Kim's shift begins at 7:50 a.m., with 30 minutes for lunch, and ends when the bell at his old campus rings at 3:20 p.m. He is to take off all breaks, school vacations and...

Officials are offering $100,000 to get the gunman behind bars. The suspect opened fire on a school police officer Wednesday in Woodland Hills, prompting a lockdown at nine schools.

Police were responding to a report that a Los Angeles Unified School District police officer was wounded at a shooting near El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. The shooting occurred around 11:45 a.m. on the campus at Valley Circle and Burbank boulevards. Live video footage from KTLA News showed dozens of police officers searching the area around the school and an ambulance apparently carrying the officer leaving the scene.

BREAKING: Three students were shot at Gardena High School in California, authorities tell Fox News. Gardena Police Lt. Steve Pendergrass tells Fox News that there was a shooting on the campus of Gardena High School. One suspect is at large and he is believed to be a student at the school.

LOS ANGELES...Facing another potential round of huge budget cuts, the Los Angeles school board unanimously approved a plan on Tuesday night to allow the district to seek corporate sponsorships as a way to get money to the schools. The district is not the first to look for private dollars...but the Los Angeles school district is by far the largest to do so...The District has cut $1.5 billion from its operating budget, now down to $5.4 billion. As recently as last month, 1,000 more employees lost their jobs in layoffs. ... “This is really our way to be responsive to that...

Education: L.A.'s mayor has blasted his old bosses for blocking reforms and protecting bad teachers. Could the unions' charmed political life finally be ending? We can only hope so. Antonio Villaraigosa was once an organizer for United Teachers of Los Angeles and a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. Now mayor of Los Angeles, he has been a staunch liberal throughout his political career. So his speech last week at a Sacramento conference of the Public Policy Institute of California was bound to make news in a man-bites-dog way. Here's a sample of what he said about his old employer,...

In a close election race against former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer is facing new ethics complaints over asking teachers to send their students to work for her campaign. In an Oct. 27 letter to California education authorities, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA), a non-profit group urging lower taxes, said, “In abject ignorance of California state law, the political campaign of Senator Barbara Boxer has openly solicited teachers employed by [Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)] to urge their students to volunteer for her campaign.” The HJTA letter refers to a letter obtained by the...

The owner of a Los Angeles home assessed at $450,000 pays more than $750 a year to finance bonds for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Which is why it is galling to some that the district has spent, or misspent, more than half-a-billion dollars on a new school, while laying off hundreds of teachers, increasing class sizes and starting the school year a week later than usual - to save money. And what a school it is. The campus was built on the site of the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, where its namesake, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated...

The largest city of the brokest state in America just opened the doors on the $578-million RFK School. Built on the site of the historic Ambassador Hotel, the K-12 facility is now the most expensive public school in the country. They gave the school a state-of-the-art swimming pool, underground parking, historically recreated sections of the hotel, "talking benches" that describe the site's significance, a teacher's lounge modeled after the famous Coconut Grove Night Club

Los Angeles - A new LAUSD school dedicated to environmental studies is set to open in Los Angeles on Monday, despite concerns about environmental safety. The Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences is a state of the art school that took five years and 75 million dollars to make. The elementary school was named in honor of biologist Rachel Carson and former vice president turned environmentalist Al Gore, but public health advocates say Carson-Gore is an environmental mistake. Jane Williams, California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT): "This school site is horribly contaminated ... there is an operating oil well on one side...

L.A. school officials have named a school after Al Gore, making him the first vice president to receive such an honor. Yet there are concerns over the school -- not over Al Gore's name but because some critics fear the campus' location poses a long-term health risk to students and staff. School district officials insist that the Arlington Heights property is clean and safe. And they've pledged to check vapor monitors and groundwater wells to make sure. The $75.5-million Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences will open Sept. 13 for about 675 students. As he was with Bill Clinton (who has...

He's the first vice president to have an L.A. school named after him, sharing the honor with author Rachel Carson. Fittingly, the campus will be devoted to environmental themes. But there's a catch. The campus was built atop contaminated land. School district officials insist that the Arlington Heights property is clean and safe. And they've pledged to check vapor monitors and groundwater wells to make sure. "Renaming this terribly contaminated school after famous environmental advocates is an affront to the great work that these individuals have done to protect the public's health from harm," an environmental coalition wrote in a...

Next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968. With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever. The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of "Taj Mahal" schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities. "There's no more of the old, windowless cinderblock...

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles Unified School District [LAUSD] joined the city of San Francisco and West Hollywood and signed on to denounce SB 1070, the Arizona law that criminalizes undocumented immigrants. ...The boycott calls for a stop of any official county travel to Arizona, as well as a revision and end to any contract with that state. ...Meanwhile, Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who last week had come out against the proposal, calling it "stupid," ratified his position this week, adding that as elected officials they must uphold the law. "We need solutions, not boycotts. Solutions,...

Even as more local schools are reaching state targets on benchmark tests, nearly three-quarters of Los Angeles Unified schools fall among the state's lowest performing campuses, according to data released today by the California Department of Education. Today's release of the state's base Academic Performance Index, or API, ranks schools based on their statewide test scores and how they perform compared to schools with similar demographics. API scores range from 200 to 1,000 points with the target being 800 points. In the last year, 158 Los Angeles Unified schools reached or exceeded the state's target API score of 800, up...