Interested in learning how to save money at the grocery store? Or do you feel like you need a refresher course in couponing?

I'll be teaching a coupon class on Saturday, Jan. 28, covering basic and advanced coupon techniques that will teach you to save at least 50 percent, if not more, on your grocery bill.

The cost of the class is $15, which you should easily recoup in your first trip to the grocery store.

We've also also got some nice freebies lined up for you to take home with you.

The issue of Michael Alves' unannounced private meeting with the new Democratic members of the Wake County school board won't seem to go away.

The issue was revisited with some heated comments during Tuesday's board meeting. The discussion, more of which is detailed later in the post, shows the continuing wariness between the Republican and Democratic members.

More recently, Terry Stoops, director of education studies for the conservative John Locke Foundation, brought up the issue in a Thursday blog post.

Should the Wake County school board make changes to the student assignment plan for the 2012-13 school year or wait until 2013-14 to implement them?

As noted in today's article, Democratic school board vice chairman Keith Sutton said the plan isn't going to be implemented in its current form. While we're only expecting straw votes today, it should be clear by the end of the board work session what kinds of changes are being contemplated.

“There are two things that are clear,” Sutton said. “We can’t stop the plan. Nor will the plan move full steam ahead as is.”

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata found himself being challenged Saturday by the new school board members on his idea of giving school autonomy based on student achievement.

Tata supports using what's called "managed performance empowerment," a hybrid between giving principals no control and total control over how they run their schools. It's part of his draft strategic plan that he's hoping the board will adopt.

"Called Managed Performance Empowerment (MPE), the theory of action grants flexibility and decision-making authority to schools based on successful performance," says Tata's draft strategic plan. "From a school support perspective, we will measure our school performance based first and foremost on student achievement and place schools along a continuum of performance to best target our support and resources as a district."

The Wake County school board will dive into the details of Superintendent Tony Tata's draft strategic plan during today's all-day retreat.

AdvancED required Wake to develop a strategic plan as one of its seven action steps when it put Wake's high schools on accreditation warned status in March. The old board started the process when it adopted the mission, vision and core beliefs for the district.

Now it's up to the new board to finish the process.

I'll go into more detail later, but here's an abbreviated recap of Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's press conference today.

Tata said he's hoping to soon reach a deal to lease the Governor Morehead School for the Blind site. He said the deal will help raise money to save the program while also providing Wake with "prime" space for a new school in that part of Raleigh.

Tata said the 3,541 magnet school applications received so far is comparable to this same time period in February. As to people complaining about seeing only a handful of seats being listed as available at some schools, Tata said the nunber is no different than in past years but they're now being transparent.

What that number reflects Tata said, is the number of seats open to students who are not yet in the magnet program. The number of openings looks artificially low because they're no longer making rising sixth- and ninth-graders in magnet schools apply to move on to the next school in their feeder.

Tata said the recent AdvancED review team visit went well and he's expecting a good report in the next 30 days.

The review team from AdvancED will begin today the interviews that will help determine whether Wake County's high schools remain accredited.

The interview schedule for today includes seven current school board members and the three newly elected board members. Also on tap today are Superintendent Tony Tata, teachers and high school principals.

Wednesday's interview schedule includes two school board members, Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore, the chief officers, area superintendents, the student assignment task force and the student body presidents.

Tomorrow's interview schedule also includes several community members and groups, including the state NAACP, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, the Wake Schools Community Alliance, the Wake PTA Council, the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Wake Education Partnership.

Has the Wake County school system done enough to satisfy AdvancED's concerns to keep the accreditation for the district's high schools.

As noted in today's article, school officials say in their progress report that they've completed five of the seven action steps laid out by AdvancED in its March report. School officials say the other steps are in progress of being completed.

"As the above progress report clearly demonstrates, significant work has occurred over the months since the AdvancED review to improve the governance and cohesiveness of the Wake County Public Schools leadership team,” according to Wake’s progress report.

I'll have more on this later, but Wake County school officials have released today their progress report to AdvancED.

Click here for a page with links to the progress report, executive summary, supporting evidence and interview schedule. Wake prepared the data ahead of the AdvancED return visit on Nov. 29-30.

The goal is to get AdvancED to keep Wake's high schools accredited.

Click here for the original AdvancED report.

The Wake County school board is scheduled to vote today on a pair of policies that could impact how the new Democratic majority adds action items to the agenda.

The board vote on Policy 1322 would revise how the regular agenda could be amended. It says that action items such as resolutions may only be added to the board agenda if they're consistent with the requirements of Policy 1321.

The board is also supposed to vote on revising Policy 1321 so that when board members request action on an item they'd have to "provide the Board with adequate data and back-up information." The current policy only puts that onus on providing data on the superintendent.

UPDATE

The items were added to the agenda in response to the AdvancED report.

During the work session, the board agreed to modify the wording on Policy 1322 to say that it would take a two-thirds vote of those present to have an action item added at the start of the meeting.

The revision on Policy 1321 has been removed from the agenda because it's felt that the two-thirds requirement added to Policy 1322 will address the issue.

The revision to Policy 1322 was unanimously approved on first reading. The new majority will handle the second and final reading.