Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Los Angeles Unified officials and elected leaders cut the ribbon Monday on Central L.A. High School #9, the district’s shiny new arts high school.

Los Angeles city officials have received complaints that dispensaries have opened up within a few feet of public schools. That would be illegal if the L.A. City Council approves new restrictions to regulate the city’s ballooning number of medical marijuana dispensaries.

After a nearly 20-year tenure that saw improvements in academics, finances, and sports, Steven Sample announced Monday he will retire before fall of next year.

The federal government says its economic stimulus package from earlier this year saved or created more than 600,000 jobs. A small portion of those funds went to arts organizations, including some in the Southland that used the money to save jobs.

The Day of the Dead, the Latin American observance that takes place Monday, hasn’t displaced Halloween in the U.S. However, a scholar argues in a new book that the observance is becoming this country’s newest holiday.

Dozens of long-time substitute teachers protested outside Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters Tuesday. They're angry about a deal struck a few months ago between teachers union leaders and district administrators that gives priority for substitute teaching jobs to about 2,000 beginning teachers the district had laid off.

Guy Mehula, the chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District's highly successful school construction program, has retired.

Several hundred Los Angeles Unified School District administrators and other employees worked the phones for a day Monday and visited door-to-door in search of truants and dropouts. Their aim was to persuade those young people back into classrooms.

At a boisterous campus rally on Wednesday, California Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico called on CSU Dominguez Hills President Mildred Garcia to end a plan that could lead to the elimination of academic programs and majors if the campus undergoes state budget cuts next year.

While most of the campus endures budget cuts, one academic program at California State University Dominguez Hills began the school year in a much larger facility thanks to a partnership with the Veterans Administration hospital in Long Beach. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez says it’s the state’s only academic training program for people who fit artificial limbs and braces.

First came the picnic; the formal sit-down dinner is next. Five days after a free concert for 18,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, Gustavo Dudamel is set to conduct the orchestra at his inaugural concert as L.A. Philharmonic Music Director at Disney Hall Thursday. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez has more on the orchestral season opener.

A California state senator is now backing editors of the campus newspaper at Los Angeles City College in a struggle with administrators. The newspaper says the college cut its budget in retaliation for articles critical of administrators. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez has the story.