The decision to allow all students in Wake County middle schools and high schools be eligible to participate in interscholastic sports led to some heated rhetoric from the school board.

Under this revised policy adopted two weeks ago, a student at a middle school or high school that doesn't have an interscholastic sports program will now be able to try out at another school designated by the district. The change affects two magnet middle schools, the early colleges, the alternative schools, Hilburn Drive Academy and the two new single-sex leadership academies.

The debate got so heated that school board member Deborah Prickett accused board member Jim Martin of opposing the policy because he personally disliked her, which he denied.  The rhetoric caused board member Christine Kushner and board chairman Kevin Hill to urge their colleagues to show more decorum.

Six Wake County schools will benefit from a new education program launched by LEGO Education that will promote the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) concept.

LEGO Education North America and the Education Blueprint Association are giving the Wake County school system two $40,000 grants with the district providing a matching $80,000. Wake is receiving two of the 14 regional centers for the LEGO Smart Schools program.

The money will allow three Raleigh schools (Combs Elementary, Centennial Campus Middle and Athens Drive High) and three Knightdale schools (Hodge Road Elementary, East Wake Middle and Knightdale High) to receive special hands-on programs from LEGO.

More details about what the schools will receive will be unveiled at a presentation this morning at Combs.

Thursday night's community mass meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church dealt with the new Wake County student assignment plan, getting mediation for the school board protesters and assailing the conditions at Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, most the focus of the meeting led by the state NAACP and the Great Schools in Wake Coalition was on complaints about the assignment plan. The crowd of around 50 people, mainly supporters of the old diversity policy, were urged to contact school leaders to change the plan.

"If you let the plane fly in the air and you don’t make those course corrections that you feel need to be made in order to make it a more successful plan for all students so we have a fair and diverse and well-funded education for all students, then shame on us if we don’t advocate for the changes to make it happen," said Patty Williams of Great Schools in Wake.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County school administrators are dialing back their recommendations to have K-12 magnet feeders as part of the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, the revised draft feeder plan list posted on Monday includes a number of changes requested by parents. Those parents mounted aggressive campaigns to keep their existing feeder patterns as opposed to being put in new ones that would have them go to magnet secondary schools.

Some of the most vocal opposition came from families at Brooks, Douglas and Joyner elementary schools. They wanted to keep their historic feeder patterns that had them going to closer non-magnet secondary schools.

The trend of more Wake County families getting into magnet schools since the end of the old diversity policy is continuing.

School officials say 4,720 out of 8,476 applicants, or 55.7 percent, were accepted into magnet schools for the 2011-12 school year. Last year, 4,450 out of 8,732 applicants were accepted, or 51 percent.

A small part of this year's increase can be attributed to the opening of the new Wake NC State STEM Early College. But that's only 56 kids.

Following intense lobbying from parents at Daniels Middle School, the Wake County school board has agreed to only reassign 73 out of 170 students into the school.

Citing crowding issues, the board agreed to move in 73 students from Leesville Middle to Daniels. But the board killed plans to move in 97 students from Centennial, East Millbrook and West Millbrook middle schools.

Staff had recommended bringing in those 170 Southeast Raleigh students both to relieve crowding at Leesville and to send kids closer to home.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Enloe High School isn’t the only one whose bell schedule got tweaked today.

While Enloe's schedule was changed again to add 10 more minutes each day for the upcoming school year, six other schools needed changes as well.

Chief Academic Officer Donna Hargens said the districtwide bell schedule list the school board approved on March 31 had some errors and left out at least one school.

There's been some questions about what the school board discussed Tuesday about changes to the magnet selection criteria.

Click here for the handout that lists the questions the board was asked to answer by staff. Even though they delayed acting on options two and three, it wasn't without some heated argument.

School board member Lori Millberg was the most vocal about changing the process to make sure magnet schools are recruiting from "the right schools."