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. "

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.

More details to come later but the Wake County school board voted 5-3 today to approve the redistricting plan for election districts.

Democratic school board member Carolyn Morrison, who said she was satisfied with the changes to her District 6, joined the Republicans in voting for the maps. The other three Democrats voted no, having unsuccessfully asked that Kieran Shanahan draw up some options they could compare the plan against.

School board members John Tedesco and Deborah Prickett warned that they'd want to consider making major changes if new options were considered. In particular, Tedesco said he'd want in that scenario to make District 5 the only Inside the Beltline district with District 4 pushing further eastward into Knightdale and the eastern part of the county.

This week's scheduled vote on the new Wake County school board redistricting proposal could have a major impact on this fall's election.

As noted in today's article, the new maps move some possible candidates into new districts. It could cause at least one incumbent not to run and impact the decisions of other prospective candidates.

The new maps muddy the waters for some potential candidates who support the old diversity policy.

FIXED LINK FOR WORK SESSION AGENDA

The Wake County school board agreed Tuesday to form a new ad-hoc committee to develop a tool for evaluating the performance of Superintendent Tony Tata.

As part of Tata's contract, his performance needs to be reviewed annually by the school board. A committee chaired by Carolyn Morrison and including Deborah Prickett and Keith Sutton will be charged with developing that evaluation tool.

School board chairman Ron Margiotta will serve as an ex-officio member of the committee. That's being done in response to concerns from board attorney Ann Majestic that a three-member committee could run afoul of the Open Meetings Law when two members discuss issues.

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.

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.

Wake County school board members are getting a sneak peak at the new long-term student assignment plan being developed by school administrators.

As noted in this online article by Thomas Goldsmith, school board members Carolyn Morrison, Kevin Hill, Chris Malone and Ron Margiotta met today with  Superintendent Tony Tata and the Student Assignment Task Force.

Additional small-group meetings will be held with the other board members. By having fewer than five members at a meeting they're able to avoid the state Open Meetings Law requirements.

"There were no policy decisions," said Michael Evans, Wake's chief communications officer. "We are anticipating being able to come to the community by mid-May with two or three courses of actions that we are going to want feedback on."

Wake County school board member John Tedesco's colleagues weren't joking when they repeatedly said he was charged up on caffeine when he gave a fiery speech at last Thursday's Northern Wake Republican Club meeting.

During the speech, Tedesco praised the board majority's actions since December 2009 in "revamping public education." He also ripped into liberals, including what he called their "unholy trinity" of the NAACP, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and Raleigh FIST.

"They will try and scare people," Tedesco said of the opposition. "People use fear. These are cowards who understand that anger can be power as long as there is a victim on TV. So they will strike fear."

How much of a priority should the Wake County school board place in not putting incumbents in the same district during this year's redistricting process?

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, the guidelines adopted by the board recommend, but do not mandate, that districts shouldn’t pit incumbents against each other. But school board Chairman Ron Margiotta said he thinks representing voters should come before protecting any individual officeholder.

The redistricting process could be made much sticker based on some new information that Margiotta says they received on the issue.