Things have taken a dramatic shift today in the development of the new student assignment plan for Wake County.

School board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman has added to the agenda a revote on the resolution calling for community-based school. Kevin Hill seconded the motion. Goldman says she still supports community schools so the vote could be over changing who is in charge of developing the new plan.

The agenda item was added after a heated exchange between Goldman and other majority members during the committee of the whole meeting.

UPDATE

Goldman won't say what wording will be in the community schools resolution. She could call for the elimination of the student assignment committee to be replaced by the full board working on the plan..

Goldman also confirmed that Tedesco and school board chairman Ron Margiotta had gone to her home last week to ask her to not voice her complaints publicly. It's not illegal because a majority wasn't present but could draw fire from critics.

Are members of the Wake County school board majority not taking board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman's concerns about the new student assignment model seriously enough?

As noted in today's article by Sadia Latifi and Thomas Goldsmith, Goldman is complaining that the majority has shut her out of the student assignment committee and isn't heeding her concerns about the boundaries in the draft map and the elimination of base assignments. But the responses from the other members of the majority range from terse to dismissive.

“We’ve seen Mrs. Goldman go back and forth on issues for the last few months,” said board member John Tedesco, chairman of the student assignment committee. “I want to see what she actually votes on six months from now before I get excited about what she says today.”

Emotions ran high during today's Wake County school board student assignment committee meeting as several changes were made during the boundary lines for the draft map.

Minority board members and their citizen reps argued that it was premature to begin making changes to the zone lines without a more through review of the entire plan. But by a 2-1 vote, majority members John Tedesco and Chris Malone outvoted Carolyn Morrison to make some changes.

"This is a waste of my time," said Nicole Sullivan, the committee member appointed by board member Keith Sutton,

SEE END OF POST FOR LIST OF MAP CHANGES AGREED TODAY

The us against the outsiders mentality was in evidence Saturday as NAACP leaders announced the federal civil rights complaint against the Wake County school system.

During the news conference, Irving Joyner parodied a New Jersey twang as he lashed into members of the school board majority for ending the diversity policy. Joyner, a law professor at N.C. Central University and the legal redress chair of the state NAACP, helped draft the complaint.

"You've got the 143 people that came here from New Jersey with their New Jersey twang that want to use this notion of neighborhood schools to make it sound like that is something good that we down here don't understand and ought to accept," Joyner said. "If it was so good they would have instituted it there. They didn't. This is our school system."

The Wake County school system is trumpeting some new initiatives that will be launched for the 2010-11 school year at Knightdale High School.

In a media advisory today, reporters are invited to attend Knightdale High tomorrow to hear Principal Carla Jernigan talk about a new Academy for Environmental Sciences and a new Freshmen Leadership Academy, Jernigan will also discuss a new initiative in which Knightdale and Green Hope high schools will jointly offer Advanced Placement and foreign language classes.

Also present Tuesday will be interim Superintendent Donna Hargens, school board chairman Ron Margiotta, school board member Chris Malone, Wake County Commissioner Joe Bryan, Knightdale Mayor Russell Killen and Knightdale Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jennifer Bryan.

You can chat with all five Wake County school board majority members today at a school, but they're not there on board business.

Ron Margiotta, Debra Goldman, Chris Malone, Deborah Prickett and John Tedesco have all committed to attending today's Wake County Republican Party "Race to the Polls" kickoff event at 5:30 p.m. at Broughton High School in Raleigh.

Last month, Tony Gurley, chairman of the board of commissioners, left a Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce meeting because a majority of his board was present. They were hearing Michael Alves talked about controlled choice.

Things got testy last week as Wake County school board members argued over which schools to approve spending money to design.

As noted in Sunday's North Raleigh News article, the school board voted 6-2  to approve spending $2.4 million to start designing M8 in northwest Raleigh, E20 in northeast Raleigh and Scotts Ridge Elementary in Apex. The vote took place after board members traded barbs over whether those were the right choices.

School board members John Tedesco and Debra Goldman objected to none of the schools on the list being from Southeast Raleigh. They argued that more new schools need to be built there to create the capacity to allow local kids to return under community schools while also preserving spaces for magnet seats.

The antipathy between the Wake County school board majority and their critics was extremely evident on Tuesday.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, speakers lashed into the board majority for abandoning the diversity policy and going to only one public comment period per month. Members of the board majority fired back later on in the discussion before adopting the public comment change.

Here are examples of some of the comments:

Some Wake County school administrators are sweating their futures now that school board members have asked interim Superintendent Donna Hargens to review whether jobs can be eliminated.

As noted in today's article, board members asked Hargens to look at more than a dozen senior administrative positions and come up with a recommendation on those positions next week.

Cutting some of those jobs could help offset the cost of restoring some of the parent counseling positions at Project Enlightenment. The board had also asked Hargens to make a recommendation on those jobs next week.

What are the odds that Tharrington Smith will still be the Wake County school board's attorney by the time the firm's one-year legal contract expires in June?

As noted in today's article, the school board's vote on June 15 to retain Tharrington Smith for one year didn't end the issue. The contract that Tharrington Smith is now working under includes a 30-day termination notice instead of the 90-day notice used by prior boards.

In this situation where Tharrington Smith could be gone in a month, former Wake County Republican Party chairman David Robinson is proposing that his firm, Nexsen Pruet, become the new board attorney.