Wake County school board members have a month's reprieve before meeting with investigators from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

School board attorney Ann Majestic confirmed that next week's scheduled interviews with board members were postponed at OCR's request. She said they'll now come back to Raleigh during the first week in May.

OCR was in town in early March to interview Superintendent Tony Tata, other school staff members and members of the disbanded school board student assignment committee.

OCR, which is going through the latest Wake response letter, is investigating the complaint filed by the state NAACP.

You can credit the attorneys at Tharrington Smith with coming up with the new data linking student performance with busing distance in Wake County schools.

As noted in today's article, school board attorney Ann Majestic had requested the data from school staff in the past month to confirm whether minority students account for the majority of those who are bused involuntarily at longer distances. Once that was shown, she asked staff to add in academic achievement into the data.

Majestic said the reason for the request was that the state NAACP is alleging that eliminating the diversity policy would have a disparate impact on minority students. In response, she wanted to see if they could see if the old policy had a disparate impact on minority students.

The Wake County school system is balking at providing the names or addresses of the 15 students who've received administrative transfers like the one given to board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman's daughter.

The News & Observer had submitted a public records request for directory information on the 15 students who've gotten administrative transfers from the superintendent that's also given them bus transportation.

But Michael Evans, Wake's chief communications officer, said the district would be unable to provide the information. He cited the legal advice of school board attorney Ann Majestic, who said the information was protected under the federal Education Rights Privacy Act.

The new budget being released this afternoon by Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata will understandably get most of the focus at the school board work session.

But another topic that will get discussion is whether the school board should keep its current committee structure. Much of the issue revolves around whether it's a drain on staff time for them to be involved in the various committees.

It's the latest chapter in the debate over whether the board should operate with committees, or at least the standing ones.

UPDATE

More details later.

Look for socioeconomic diversity supporters, both in Wake County and nationally, to lobby the Obama Administration to change the U.S. Department of Agriculture's opinion that school lunch data can't be used for student assignment.

One example is this post today in the Progressive Pulse blog, maintained by the liberal N.C. Policy Watch, which calls the interpretation from Mara McElmurry in USDA's Child Nutrition Division "merely...an e-mail from a program analyst." Regardless of the source of the information, Wake school board attorney Ann Majestic says it has to be viewed as the official position of the USDA unless they hear otherwise.

"Thankfully, the final decisions on critical legal issues like these are not made by program analysts from the Department of Agriculture," according to the blog post. "Both the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have held up Wake County’s old socioeconomic diversity plan as a national model and no federal agency has questioned legality of the use of the data for more than a decade."

It doesn't look like the Wake County school system could go back to using free and reduced lunch data to maintain socioeconomic diversity even if wanted to do so.

As noted in today's article, the latest guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school nutrition programs, is that F&R data can't be used for local purposes such as student assignment. Wake had asked for the opinion as part of its efforts to comply with the U.S. Department of Education's request for lunch data as part of its civil rights probe into ending the diversity policy.

School board attorney Ann Majestic said the clear indication of the latest response is that Wake can't go back to its old goal of trying to keep schools at below 40 percent F&R.

Is the Wake County school board looking for a backdoor in case it loses accreditation from AdvancED?

The school board is set to discuss and vote today on its 2011 Legislative Agenda, which lists the issues it will lobby the General Assembly on. One of the items in the draft agenda is to "review the state accreditation process and provide clarification to the school system."

During the AdvancED fight, school board attorney Ann Majestic has broached to school board members the possibility of seeking state accreditation. The problem is it no longer exists in the form that Wake would want.

UPDATE

One issue that will likely wait two weeks is adding allowing the board chair to vote on all issues. The Democratic members objected to voting today, saying they want more information first on why the prohibition was added to the merger law.

Are some Wake County teachers dressing so unprofessionally that they need a reminder of what they should be wearing?

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata will remind school employees, particularly teachers, about the need to dress professionally. School board members, particularly Debra Goldman, raised concerns during Wednesday's policy committee meeting that some teachers were crossing the line of what's appropriate attire.

The issue initially came up Wednesday when staff presented the student and employee dress codes for review. Staff didn't make any recommendations for changes but said they wanted board input.

Here's a very abbreviated recap of today's Wake County school board policy committee meeting with more details to come later.

Teachers will be reminded of the need to dress professionally following concerns raised by school board member Debra Goldman. The student dress code will be revised to meet some legal concerns from board attorney Ann Majestic about potential violations of First Amendment free speech rights.

Chief Academic Officer Donna Hargens will meet with high school principals about the possibility of setting up waivers so that students who miss class because of a doctor's orders won't be penalized when it comes to counting absences for exam exemptions.

Could the wording from the Oct. 5 resolution that killed the zone plan come back to bite the Wake County school board during the accreditation review?

As noted in today's article, Mark Elgart, president of AdvancED, said the review team will question how the school board will follow through on the wording in the Oct. 5 resolution to provide “equity and equal opportunity” for all students. It's part of the review of whether the school board is following its own policies and procedures.

“We’re telling them it’s their right to assign students as they wish,” Elgart said. “But when you have a resolution that says you will ensure equality of opportunity, you have to say how you will do that.”