The Wake County school board voted 5-4 tonight to give final approval to policy changes that cut back on the role of PTAs on board advisory councils.

Among the changes, board members no longer have to consult with the PTAs before nominating BAC members for each school. The policy also no longer says that BAC members should be placed on the boards of their local PTA.

Before the vote, some speakers urged the board to consider a compromise.

CORRECTED TO REMOVE REFERENCE THAT DULANEY WAS ON OLD STUDENT ASSIGNMENT COMMITTEE

More to come later but the Wake County school board groused today about the impact of adding five more instructional days to the calendar and also agreed to ask the General Assembly for more money.

The school system is concerned that the budget passed by the General Assembly adds five more days to the instructional calendar for this fall. In addition to forcing a last-minute revision to the 2011-12 calendars to add in the days, you've also got the prospect of increasing transportation costs by $500,000, or $100,000 a day.

As for state funding, the board agreed to draft a letter to legislators asking for money than the 6 percent cut provided under the General Assembly budget. The letter, pushed by the Democratic board members, got okayed when GOP board member Chris Malone said he'd support it if they also thanked legislators for not cutting funding by as much as 10 percent.

Click here for the online story by Thomas Goldsmith.

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.

You can add Knightdale to the list of critics of the Wake County school board redistricting proposal.

As noted in today's article, Knightdale community leaders are lobbying the school board to change a proposal that would put the town into three different board districts. They're currently now in District 1 but the plan would send part of the town to Districts 2 and 4.

"The ability for us to have any influence on the board is certainly diluted," said Knightdale Mayor Russell Killen.

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.

The issue of whether siblings could be accommodated on Track 4 decided which Wake County year-round schools would make the move to a single track for the next two school years.

Click here for this handout that shows how the 14 underutilized year-round schools were evaluated by staff. Inability to accommodate siblings was cited for eight of the nine schools as to why a move to a single-track year-round calendar wasn't considered feasible.

Laura Evans, senior director for Growth and Planning, said inability to accommodate siblings reflected challenges caused by moving multi-track year-round schools to a single-track calendar.

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."

It's been expensive both in terms of monetary cost and staff time responding to the various NAACP-related complaints filed against the Wake County school system for ending the diversity policy.

Based on a handout shared at Tuesday's board work session, school administrators estimated that they've spent 807.7 hours in staff time dealing with the Open Meetings lawsuit, the AdvancED investigation and the federal civil rights investigation.

The majority of the time, 592.2 hours, was spent responding to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights investigation.