Wake County school board chairman Kevin Hill is trying to ease concerns about the school board's recent vote to change the student assignment plan for the 2013-14 school year.

As noted in today's article, Hill said during a Friday meeting with N&O editors and reporters that he's not expecting the return to an address-based plan to result in large-scale reassignment. He stressed the proposed "stay where you start" policy which would allow students to stay at the school they're attending until they complete the grade span.

But Hill also said they're still going to have to reassign people to fill all the new schools that Wake will need to deal with growth.

Can the Wake County school system attract enough applicants to open Richland Creek Elementary School in Wake Forest this year?

As noted in Sunday's North Raleigh News article by Chelsea Kellner, school officials said that Richland Creek needs at least 100 students to have a principal. The school had 46 applicants after round two.

The deadline for the school board to make a decision on Richland Creek for this year will be in June.

Here's a quick recap of the student assignment discussion at the Wake County school board meeting.

The staff will revise the online parent survey to make the wording more neutral and allow parents to do things like indicate if their feeder or not having their old base assignment was a factor. One area to be hammered out is whether it should be an anonymous survey.

Staff isn't recommending a blanket guarantee of transportation to all 584 remaining pre-assigned feeder students who don't have bus service for this fall. The board members are split on the issue and will likely hold off on making a decision to see whether staff can do further analysis on what it would take to provide them all bus service.

UPDATE

The school board voted to delay the opening of Abbotts Creek Elementary until 2013.

The budget, student assignment and magnet schools are among the items on today's Wake County school board plate.

During the work session, the board is setting aside an hour to get a staff update on how round two of the assignment plan went and to hear about any recommendations for changes. The vote on changes would come during the regular meeting.

Student assignment topics will include the questions and timing for the parent survey, whether to provide transportation to pre-assigned feeder pattern students with no bus service, when to dissolve wait lists, the perception of mandatory year round assignments and whether to open this fall Abbotts Creek and Richland Creek elementary schools.

It looks one of Wake County's two new modular elementary schools will be delayed a year because of a lack of parental interest under the new student assignment plan.

Chief Transformation Judy Peppler told school board members today they need  until next Tuesday to be able to make recommendations to changes to the plan. She said they're still in the process of running the wait list results for round 1 and then using the algorithm for the Round 2 results so that notifications will still go out Thursday.

But under pressing from several board members tonight, Peppler said they expect to recommend delaying the opening of Abbotts Creek Elementary by one year. She said they expect to recommend opening Richland Creek Elementary on scheduled for this year.

Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata is reassuring parents at two new single-sex schools that they’ll open this fall even if a deal to house the academies at William Peace University falls through.

In this letter Wednesday to families at the new schools, Tata told them that the contingency plan would be to house the men’s leadership academy at a modular school site next to East Millbrook Middle School in North Raleigh.

Tata said the backup plan for the women’s leadership academy would be to house them at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in downtown Raleigh.

School officials said there’s enough space next to East Millbrook that they could house both the men’s academy and the new Abbotts Creek Elementary School if needed. Abbotts Creek received so few applicants in the first round of the school selection process that the school’s opening may be delayed.

If only one of the two new Wake County elementary schools does open for the 2012-13 school year, it could be Richland Creek Elementary in Wake Forest.

Superintendent Tony Tata told school board members this week that there appears to be a greater need for Richland Creek than for Abbotts Creek Elementary for the upcoming school year based on the capacity needs of their respective areas.

Tata said they'd wait until after the end of the second round of school selection to recommend whether to delay the opening of either or both schools. Both new schools, slated to open in modular campuses until their permanent buildings are constructed, had few applicants in Round 1.

Here's a reap of today's press conference in which Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata focused mainly on the new student assignment plan.

Wake's Customer Service Department will be open from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at 431-7333 to field calls from people who might have problems going online to look up their results at assignment.wcpss.net. Tata asked for patience trying to get online today.

Tata said the percentage of families getting their first choice will go up over the next week. He said that over the weekend they'll fill 723 open magnet school slots with people on the wait lists, which will in turn free up more seats at the proximity schools.

UPDATE

Click here to read Wake's press release.

Corrected to reflect that there are 723 open magnet slots as oppose to the number of people on the wait lists.

Wake pushed up the posting time for the results two hours early to 3 p.m. so they're now viewable.

Once again, please contact me today at khui@newsobserver.com or Tommy Goldsmith at tgoldsmith@newsobserver.com once you've looked up the results.

There's both good news and bad news in the first round of the Wake County student assignment plan choice selection results.

As noted in today's article, the results showed that 74.9 percent of the 19,048 applicants got their first-choice school. Superintendent Tony Tata touted that 97 percent of students are going to the school they want by including with the successful first-choice applicants all the other existing families who took their preliminary assignment and didn't apply.

But problems include how some schools didn't get many applicants, particularly Abbotts Creek Elementary and Richland Creek Elementary, a pair of new schools slated to open for the 2012-13 school year.

Wake County school leaders announced tonight the appointments and transfers of seven permanent and seven interim principals.

Scott Lyons was named principal of Enloe High in Raleigh with a salary of $99,666. He's been principal of Leesville Road High since 2009. He used to be an assistant principal at Enloe.

Christopher McCabe will be principal of Heritage Middle in Wake Forest with a salary of $93,303. He's been principal of North Forest Pines Drive Elementary since 2007.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR BIO SHEETS