LA Unified board members were jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out.

It got worse this Tuesday, when she came back and brought a top state official with the same message.

“Yes, my presence is indicative that this is serious,” said Nick Schweizer, deputy superintendent of public instruction for the California Department of Education, who joined Candi Clark, chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, at Tuesday’s board meeting. The two warned LA school board members that time was running out for them to get their house in order — or they will lose control over it and the state will eventually take over.

After a morning of pleas, sometimes teary, made for and against a proposed interim rent freeze, Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the lone vote opposing the measure.

In the end, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved 4-1 a motion to come up with an interim rent-freeze ordinance that would limit rent increases to 3 percent annually.

The ordinance — which the board expects to see defined in 60 days — would apply to all unincorporated areas of the county, including those in the Santa Clarita Valley, except for properties exempt from rent control.

Students from Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights recently took to the streets to demand action on gun control and to challenge the criminalization of youth of color. They want to study at school free from the threats of gun violence and want positive school climates that uplift them.

A march led by Roosevelt High students is not unusual. The school has a rich history of activism. On March 6, they commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Walkouts, which marked an important moment in the history of Chicanos in Los Angeles.

The fighting spirit of Roosevelt is a source of community pride. It is as if the past, present, and future live in these students. Not the concrete buildings, nor the stairs and hallways, but in the young people themselves as they fill the classrooms and take to the streets. The spirit lives in the young people inside those facilities, who come to school to learn and grow.

L.A. schools will soon get more money if they are located in neighborhoods with such problems as high levels of gun violence and asthma.

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a new formula to determine how to dole out some funding to schools, based not only on the characteristics of the student populations but on the traumas that affect the communities around campuses.

NBC4 Southern California, Telemundo 52 Los Angeles and the NBCUniversal Foundation today announced that six local non-profit organizations will receive a total of $225,000 in grants as part of the first annual Project Innovation grant challenge. The winning organizations were selected by the stations for their outstanding programs that leverage technology to solve everyday problems in the areas of civic engagement, skills for the digital economy and STEM/STEAM youth programming.

NBC and Telemundo owned stations located in 11 markets, including Los Angeles, launched the new grant challenge in January 2018 to identify local organizations that embrace technology and innovation to develop real-life solutions for their communities.

Responding to years of pressure by Los Angeles community and education advocates, LA Unified next month may commit to funding schools based on a new ranking that gives priority to those with the highest-need students.

Nearly $140 million in new funding is expected to flow to the district in the next two years as part of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to fully fund his Local Control Funding Formula. Advocates want to make sure those dollars get to the students who are furthest from meeting academic standards and live with the most challenges.

Young women are leading the March For Our Lives movement, and last Saturday brought hundreds of thousands of protestors out into the streets for rallies demanding gun control, and protesting gun violence in all communities.

Students from Inner City Struggle (ICS) marched in Los Angeles – bringing youth of color voices to this movement and mobilizing young people to #takebackthevote in California.

As a 16-year-old in high school and a student of history, Axel Ortega faces a tough choice on Wednesday morning: Does he walk out of class at Garfield to take a stand or stay put? And if he walks out, does he leave his East Los Angeles campus?

Axel's principal and other administrators also have been pondering what choices Axel and other students will make and how to respond.

Guests:

Raul Ruiz, former editor for several underground student newspapers in 1968

Mario Garcia, author of “Blowout: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice”

Maria Brenes, executive director of Inner City Struggle, a group working to empower families on LA’s east side

Source: https://soundcloud.com/taketwoshow/roundtable-discussion-the-legacy-of-the-east-la-walkouts

In Magdalena Ceja's classroom, mice scurry in and out. Electrical outlets in her wall, which power technology Ceja needs to teach, fail. Tiles fall from the ceiling, which leaks in places.

Crumbling facilities are the norm at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights neighborhood, a 96-year-old campus that made the history books in 1968 when students walked out to protest unequal conditions for Latinos in the L.A. Unified School District — including, ironically, inadequate facilities.