Nearly two-dozen Wake County students are facing the impact of the enrollment caps that were placed on some schools for the rest of the school year.

Laura Evans, senior director of student assignment, said that as of Wednesday 22 students have been capped out of their base school for the rest of the school year. The information was shared during Thursday's joint meeting of the school board and county commissioners.

“It’s not something like we do, but we also don’t like excessively crowded schools," Evans said.

Is expanding the use of enrollment caps the best way to deal with overcrowding in Wake County schools for the 2013-14 school year?

As noted in today's article, there was a lot of discussion Tuesday about staff's recommendation to put full caps on 12 schools for the rest of the school year and partial caps on 22 schools.

Staff pitched the caps as being an alternative to using reassignment to deal with overcrowding.

The draft summary of Wake County's new student assignment plan seems to promise a lot of things to different people.

As noted in today's article, the plan promotes proximity by noting that "base assignments will be made at one of their proximate schools to the extent possible." It also says that "residential areas and subdivisions proximate to schools and representative of the students already attending the schools" were used.

For those concerned about diversity, administrators say "in the establishment of the base school attendance area, student performance data was used when an overcrowded or under enrolled school was adjusted."

Future plans for a ninth-grade center to control overcrowding at Panther Creek High School are back on hold again.

The Wake County school board voted last week to direct staff not to spend any additional money on design work to place modular units for Panther Creek's ninth-grade center on the M-16 campus. The vote was made possible because of the absence of two Democratic board members, giving Republicans a temporary majority.

Whether the Democratic majority will let that stand at next week's meeting remains to be seen. At least some GOP board members want to return to the original plan of leasing an office building on Pleasant Grove Church Road in Morrisvillle.

The Wake County school board voted 5-4 tonight to rescind its decision to lease an office building to house freshmen from Cary’s Panther Creek High School.

The board had voted Feb. 7 to lease a 77,574-square-foot office building at 3700 Pleasant Church Grove Road in Morrisville. Parents complained that the office building was too far from the main campus to allow for convenient access to classes and extracurricular activities.

Left undetermined is what the school system will now do to relieve overcrowding at Panther Creek.

Here's the quick recap of today's press conference held by Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata.

Tata defended the proposed bell schedules changes as a way that will save money that can be put to better use in the classroom. But he also acknowledged parental concerns, pointing to the online survey that has generated 1,100 comments so far.

Tata also said today that, based on parental feedback, he'll talk with school board chairman Kevin Hill about taking another look at the deal to lease an office building to serve as a new Panther Creek High School ninth-grade center.

The board opted not to stick modular units on the site of a future middle school next to Alston Ridge Elementary School. While the office building at 3700 Pleasant Church Grove Road in Morrisville is further away from the high school, it can be ready for the 2012-13 school year.

UPDATE

Click here for the online story.

The issue of whether siblings could be accommodated on Track 4 decided which Wake County year-round schools would make the move to a single track for the next two school years.

Click here for this handout that shows how the 14 underutilized year-round schools were evaluated by staff. Inability to accommodate siblings was cited for eight of the nine schools as to why a move to a single-track year-round calendar wasn't considered feasible.

Laura Evans, senior director for Growth and Planning, said inability to accommodate siblings reflected challenges caused by moving multi-track year-round schools to a single-track calendar.

More details to come later but Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata is recommending today that Alston Ridge, Highcroft, Lake Myra, Rand Road and Timber Drive elementary schools make the change to single-track year-round.

Tata said the schools would make the move as part of a two-year pilot that he estimated could save Wake $400,000. The schools are expected to all move to track 4.

Tata says they'll take steps like making allowances for families who would have been on tracks 1, 2 and 3 who had already planned to be in school in July. Track 4 starts in late July so they'll provide a trackout program.

UPDATE

The changes to all five schools were unanimously approved.

More details to come later but there's now a proposal on the table to collapse 14 multi-track Wake County year-round schools to a single track.

Superintendent Tony Tata proposed today giving flexibility to principals at under-enrolled year-round schools the flexibility to go to a single track for the 2011-12 school year. He said the principals would pick the track.

The schools identified by Tata are those that are at under 100 percent of what would be their single-track capacity: Alston Ridge, Ballentine, Banks Road, East Garner, Harris Creek, Highcroft, Lake Myra, Rand Road, River Bend, Timber Drive, Wakefield and West Lake elementary schools; and East Cary and Holly Grove middle schools.

UPDATE

Tata says he'll come back in May with a specific list of schools to recommend. While he didn't specify a number, it will likely not be all of the 14 year-round schools that are below 100 percent of single-track capacity.

Are you ready for another battle over converting some Wake County year-round schools to a traditional calendar?

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata said he's looking at whether to recommend converting some year-round schools to a traditional calendar as part of his 2011-12 budget. It stemmed from his review on how to efficiently utilize space throughout the district.

"We can’t have 140 percent enrollment in one school and 50 percent in another school," Tata said about why he was looking at spending $900,000 to help provide teachers at 19 underenrolled traditional-calendar elementary schools. "So this an effort to make all of our schools desirable."