Howard Blume

Debra Dipaolo For critics of the scandal-plagued Belmont Learning Complex — the nation’s most expensive high school project — the school board’s upcoming vote has been a long time coming. For the first time, a majority of board members are on the verge of killing the project, which sits half-finished......

Carrots, Jessica Boone; Ruben & Ramon, APWide World; Hayden, Debra Dipaolo For exactly one day, the school-reform plan of L.A. schools Superintendent Ruben Zacarias was the hottest story in town, drawing a horde of TV cameras and an above-the-fold headline in the L.A. Times. This was the reform vision of......

For indignant defenders of ousted Superintendent Ruben Zacarias, the proof of betrayal was undeniable: On July 1, at her swearing-in ceremony, school-board President Genethia Hudley Hayes told an appreciative crowd, ”First and foremost, I am here to support our superintendent, Dr. Ruben Zacarias. I am here to allow him to......

Photo AP/Wide World He’s the Rip Van Winkle of the Los Angeles Unified School District. When Howard Miller left the school board 20 years ago, he had been completely rebuked — the only member ever to be recalled from office by voters. No one thought they’d ever see him again......

A lot of us have been there. Maybe it was when you heard that middle schoolers are going without textbooks. Or when you realized that your neighborhood elementary school is overcrowded and has lousy test scores. Or when you learned that the school district is spending $200 million to build......

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter No one has to sell the staff at Walter Reed Middle School on the benefits of school reform. At Reed, a homegrown reform team took control of the budget and raised money to update computers, keep a nurse on staff, train teachers and tutor children......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo Right about now, construction of the Belmont Learning Complex was supposed to be winding down. But instead of approving the finishing touches on a glittering, first-of-its-kind campus, the school board Tuesday ordered a near shutdown of the lagging, half-finished project over environmental concerns at the contaminated......

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter It was the day after Election Day — less than 24 hours after Mayor Richard Riordan and his wealthy allies had masterminded the most expensive school-board campaign in history — and a new power equation was already asserting itself. School-board member David Tokofsky was approached......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo Following a year of environmental scandals that stalled construction projects and cost the L.A. Unified School District millions of dollars, a specially appointed team of environmental consultants accused district bureaucrats of failing to follow their superintendent’s own safety directives, the Weekly has learned. The consultants nearly......

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter Urged on by a private developer, school-board president Victoria Castro is pressing to move forward on a school-district-subsidized shopping center as part of the $200 million Belmont Learning Complex, the state’s largest and most expensive high school construction project. The Weekly has learned that the......