The potential loss of $12 million in state funding for 400 teacher assistant positions in the Wake County school system could have a noticeable impact.

During the last budget work session, Chief Business Officer David Neter said that 15 elementary schools have converted a third or more of their funding for teacher assistant months to pay for something else.

But Neter said they should keep in mind that "the vast majority" of elementary schools are converting either a third or less of their TA months.

The touchy issue of providing rigorous math options for Wake County's academically gifted students, particularly in middle school, is raising its head again.

As noted in today's article, a group of parents of AG fifth-grade students is complaining about how the new Common Core math curriculum isn't challenging enough. But what really steams this is how Wake is handling the issue of single-subject math acceleration for this fall.

These parents, who will meet with school administrators Thursday, aren't happy about what they're being asked to do at this last minute to get their kids accelerated into Common Core Math 7. They were recommended for Common Core Math 6 Plus.

Is creating an Office of Diversity and Equity something that the Wake County school system should look at exploring?

As noted in today's article, the school board told staff on Tuesday to revise the budget proposal to come up with up to $200,000 to create this new office. Board members say this office, along with the revisions in the student assignment policy to minimize concentrations of low-income and low-performing students at schools and the new equity policy will help promote equity for students.

School board chairman Keith Sutton has been the big backer of creating this new office, which is modeled on one in the Guilford County school system. It's because of Sutton that staff developed a business case for creating the new office even though it wasn't part of the original budget request.

Should the Wake County school system spend as much as $90 million in the next school construction bond issue on technology?

At Wednesday's school board facilities committee meeting, staff outlined proposals for $54 million to establish a "classroom baseline" and $36 million in network systems. Click h here for the network needs.

A lot of the discussion was around the classroom technology piece, where the goal in the next bond is to reach a ratio of one device (laptop, iPad or tablet) for every three students. This would involve 50,000 devices for $25 million.

It looks like Wake County's schools may all have at least 1,025 hours of instruction but some changes might still be needed.

Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore said after Tuesday's school board work session presentation on the draft 2013-14 bell schedules that a survey of all the schools seemed to indicate they had more than 1,025 hours. She said she was still waiting to hear back from some schools.

The school budget, student assignment and bell schedules are among the items that the Wake County school board will deal with today.

During the work session, school transportation staff will present this list of 15 schools whose bell schedules are proposed for changes in the 2013-14 school year. The wild card is whether Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore tells the board that any other schools need changes to meet the new state requirement of 1,025 instructional hours.

The board is then slotting more than an hour to discuss factors and goals to use in the new comprehensive 2014-15 plan. This handout is the result of the wide-ranging discussion held Feb. 7.

During the regular meeting, interim Superintendent Stephen Gainey will present his 2013-14 fiscal year budget proposal. We'll see how much of an increase he wants to request from county commissioners.

Wake County school administrators say they're trying to address concerns of Brier Creek Elementary School parents who are worried about being forced to change year-round tracks or have children on different tracks.

Brier Creek's PTA has set up this online petition asking the school board to waive policy to reduce the minimum class sizes in fourth- and fifth-grades. The petition says that the school can't fund a 4th-grade teacher for the rising 3rd grade class on a given track, resulting in a track change or siblings on different tracks.

School administrators said last week that they're working on addressing the issue in the upcoming budget that will be presented March 5. They also say that the Brier Creek petition contains some errors.

Does the Wake County school system do enough to keep students away from pornographic and violent websites on school computers?

As noted in today's article, Carolyn Homan doesn't think so and has been trying to urge the school system to do more since November 2011. Feeling she wasn't getting anywhere, she made her pitch directly to the school board on Tuesday.

Homan showed a YouTube video and held up explicit images that she said she had found while surfing computers at her children's school, Brassfield Elementary School.

It's not an understatement to say that Thursday's Wake County school board discussion on the student assignment policy was a free-wheeling discussion.

The variety of topics discussed, such as how explicit to make an achievement goal and what to say about socioeconomic diversity, set the stage for the long process to follow to come up with a revised policy.

Unlike most committee meetings, nearly every board member including new appointee Tom Benton attended. That's a sign of how important the discussion was viewed.

How many Wake County schools need to change their bell schedules this fall to meet the new state requirement for 1,025 hours of instruction?

Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore told the school board's student achievement committee last week that they're still gathering data from individual schools. The schools are checking their schedules to see how many hours they currently have.

Wake is going with 1,025 hours instead of 185 days for the 2013-14 school year after the General Assembly said districts could use either option. It used to be 180 days and 1,000 hours.

Wake needs to know before the bell schedules are adopted by the school board in March. Any schools that are short will need to tack on some additional time to their school day.