Howard Blume

Riordan, Ted Soqui Richard Riordan bought himself an education revolution this week, claiming apparent victories in three school-board races and throwing the fourth contest into a runoff that favors his endorsed challenger. Although the results were promising for Riordan in all the contests, he achieved clear-cut wins in two races,......

Photo by Robert Yager Two years ago, Richard Riordan evoked puzzlement and punditry when he vowed to become the "education mayor" of L.A. The mayor, after all, has no authority over the city school system. Bemusement only increased thereafter as Riordan, in pursuit of this goal, stumbled through a series......

Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter A year of retirement looked good on former school-district Planning Director Dominic Shambra. He’d lost some weight; the tan suit was less rumpled than usual. But Shambra wasn’t smiling as he approached the familiar podium in the school-board meeting chamber — this time he was......

Photo by Cindy AndersonThe name McKinsey never surfaces in the debate over L.A. school reform and next month’s school-board election. But McKinsey & Co., one of the globe’s leading business consulting firms, is a player — both in the school superintendent’s office and in private with business leaders who’ve pounced......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo It was a changed school board last week that took up the $200 million–plus Belmont Learning Complex, a half-completed proj-ect that is now in limbo over possible toxic hazards at the site. For once, there were no rhetorical flourishes, no playing to crowds of bused-in Belmont......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo Last Friday found L.A. school-board member David Tokofsky standing in a dirt lot, gazing upon the massive, exposed steel girders of the Belmont Learning Complex, the giant high school project he had long fought to block, when his cell phone rang. On the line was the......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo Until recent weeks, the talk had long percolated in the backrooms of the L.A. school district. A land swap involving the Air Force was to trigger a make-over of the central office that could trigger hundreds of millions of dollars in construction and private development. Instead,......

It's now five years since the state Department of Education took over the Compton Unified School District. The mission was to throw out a corrupt and inept administration and show Compton - and everyone else - how to educate impoverished minority children. If the state's best and brightest couldn't do......

Ora Carrier has been teaching children at the Nikka Tiffany School in South L.A. for nearly 25 years, and it's never been easy. She has to keep prices at her private school affordable to middle- and working-class families, leaving her with just enough money to keep the doors open, let......