The blue plan appears to be the favorite over the green plan for Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata and several school board members.

During Monday's news briefing on the plan, Tata spent the majority of the time talking about the blue plan. Relatively little mention was made of the green plan.

"The blue plan seems to be a better fit but I don’t want to prejudice anybody," Tata said when asked if he had a favorite. "The public may have a different perspective. "

Is the Wake Count school system not getting the best bang for the buck by offering higher pay for teachers who have master's degrees or national board certification?

At Tuesday's school board work session, school administrators presented data showing the majority of Wake's high-performing teachers don't have either a master's degree or national board certification.

"An important point is we pay extra for the board-certified teachers and the advanced-degree teachers receive extra but the high-performing teachers receive nothing," said Superintendent Tony Tata.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Should the Wake County school board have requested an additional redistricting map to review before approving the lines that will be used for elections over the next 10 years?

As noted in today's article, the issue of only having one map split the board in the 5-3 vote. Kevin Hill, Anne McLaurin and Keith Sutton unsuccessfully urged the board to ask Kieran Shanahan to come up with an additional map to consider before holding a final vote.

The other school board members said they were reasonably satisfied with the map and felt there was not a need to draw up any other options.

The Wake County school board approved a plan today to save $5.4 million by laying off 95 secretaries and clerks and eliminating 79 vacant positions.

The cuts will equal one clerical position at each school and 19 secretarial positions in central office. The employees will stay through the end of the school year.

The cuts are being made in the face of potential state budget cuts to support staff positions that could cost Wake $8 million. Wake school administrators said they'd present cuts, if needed, later for custodial positions to make up the rest of the money.

None of the speakers had good things to say Tuesday about the proposed Wake County school board redistricting maps.

As noted in today's article, most of the speakers were critics of the board majority who questioned both the way the new maps were developed and the boundary lines used. Another gripe was about school board members Chris Malone and John Tedesco saying ahead of time they wouldn't support making revisions to the maps.

Jim Martin kicked things off with questions about the changes, particularly in southwestern Wake. He said that area has been "a pawn in annexation discussions" and other issues.

UPDATE

Click here to view the proposed map from Jim Martin.

Opposition is forming to the proposed Wake County school board redistricting maps.

As noted in today's article, Democratic school board member Anne McLaurin, Wake County Democratic Party Chairman Mack Paul, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and the League of Women Voters of Wake County are all upset about the maps.

Much of the concerns seems to revolve around McLaurin's District 5. Despite some speculation that McLaurin won't seek a second term, she said she's leaning toward running again.

UPDATE

Only two speakers registered online in advance of the hearing. You can begin registering in person at the hearing site at 4:45 p.m. There are a total of nine speakers this evening.

Money is already flowing into Wake County school board campaigns several months before the elections or even the start of the campaign filing period.

The biggest early donors are Ann Campbell and John Campbell. School board members Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton have both received $8,000 from the Campbells.

Ann Campbell, the president of Campbell Alliance Pharmaceutical Consulting, might sound familiar. She's a magnet school parent from North Raleigh and Great Schools in Wake Coalition member who wrote this March 17 op-ed piece urging support for maintaining socioeconomic diversity in schools.

The proposed revision to Wake County's student discipline policies will take up a good chunk of time at today's economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

School board member John Tedesco, who chairs the task force, made a last-minute adjustment to the agenda to get the discipline discussion added. He had pushed during Tuesday's board meeting to get the changes pulled from the agenda to have more discussion about them.

Tedesco said he still supports the overhaul. But Tedesco said he agree with those who think that they can make the revisions even better.

Is it the responsibility of Wake County school board members to ask for how much money they think they need or how much they think they can get?

As noted in today's article, that represented the split among Republican and Democratic board members when voting on the school budget proposal on Tuesday. Democrats on the board argued they need to ask for at least the same amount in local per-pupil funding as last year, even if it means asking for more money from the county commissioners.

"While I think the superintendent's budget is a very good one that has some very innovative ideas that protects classrooms and is overall a very good budget, I do think that we have a responsibility as a board to seek more funding, particularly given that we're in the third year of flat funding," said Democratic board member Keith Sutton.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker announced today he's not running for re-election, but there's still no official word on the status of his wife, Wake County school board member Anne McLaurin.

McLaurin has publicly said she hasn't made up her mind about running for another term this year. McLaurin isn't at today's school board meeting because she's on jury duty, which also kept her from attending Meeker's announcement.

Regardless, it's less likely that there will be a repeat of 2007 when only one candidate ran in District 5. But, depending on the redistricting, this would still likely be an easier seat for the Democrats to retain than some of the others on the October ballot.

UPDATE

McLaurin was dismissed from jury duty today after she wasn't placed on a panel. She showed up later at the school board meeting and said she had not made up her mind yet about running for re-election.