Will the Wake County school board's decision Tuesday to back a statewide resolution opposing transferring school ownership to county commissioners be a good or bad thing?

As noted in today's article, Republican school board members tried to talk their colleagues out of voting on the resolution Tuesday. But members of the Democratic board majority insisted they needed to respond to what's now become a statewide issue since the Wake County Board of Commissioners made the request.

“This is not the best way to deal with these situations," said Democratic board member Jim Martin. "But we’re not in the best situation. This is an issue that should have been discussed between our two boards. It shouldn’t be going to the legislature.”

How does the idea sound of having a mass election for all Wake County school board seats in 2014?

As noted in today's article, state Rep. Chris Malone said legislators are considering various options for changing the way Wake school board members are elected in response to the request from the board of commissioners.

Ideas on the table include making some or all the seats at-large and changing the elections to even-numbered years. One of the more intriguing ideas would involve extending by a year the board members elected in 2009 and shortening by a year those elected in 2011.

Wake County school administrators are pointing to the link between student assignment and the number of new schools that are needed in the next school construction bond issue.

Joe Desormeaux, assistant superintendent for facilities, told school board members last week that revised projections show that 13 to 26 new schools are needed by the 2016-17 school year to keep up with growth.

If Wake sticks to its current practice of only partially filling new schools when they open, Desormeaux said they'll need closer to the high end of the 26 schools. If Wake opens the schools at full capacity and reduces grandfathering, it would reduce the number of new schools but not make families happy.

There's apparently enough justification in the charges leveled by the Wake County Taxpayers Association to keep the Wake County school system's high school from regaining full accreditation.

As noted in today's article, Mark Elgart, president of AdvancED, said that they haven't officially made a determination as to whether the WCTA complaint is valid. However, he said, if the agency had already found it to be invalid it would have given Wake’s high schools full accreditation.

“We’re not picking sides in the complaint,” Elgart said. “But there’s clearly a lack of confidence in the community.”

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.

Can the Wake County school board successfully harmonize policies on student assignment, equity and closing the achievement gap?

Understandably, much of the focus of today's joint meeting of the school board's student achievement and policy committees will be on the review of the student assignment policy. They'll go over these handouts from the Sept. 25 committee meeting, which talks about developing an assignment plan to avoid high concentrations of low-performing students in a school.

The details of the achievement component, along with whatever modified version of a socioeconomic component that doesn't use school lunch data, would need to be finalized before it could be used in the 2014-15 plan.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The Wake County school board is going to fight it out in the General Assembly against the county commissioners over proposed legislative changes.

As noted in today's article, members of the school board's Democratic majority objected to the legislative changes backed by the GOP majority on the county commissioners. The school board will fight letting commissioners take over ownership of schools, give money to help charter schools build facilities and their support for adding at-large school board seats.

Democratic board members said they were defending the school system by hiring a lobbyist to oppose the commissioners' 2013 state legislative agenda.

More to come later, but the Wake County school board picked Tom Benton to be its newest member and hired a lobbyist to oppose the legislative changes backed by the county commissioners.

Benton got four votes from Susan Evans, Kevin Hill, Christine Kushner and Jim Martin. Keith Sutton voted for Don Mial. Deborah Prickett backed Wendy Ford and John Tedesco chose Shinica Thomas.

The board voted 5-2 with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition to authorize interim Superintendent Stephen Gainey to enter into contracts to get people to lobby the General Assembly not to adopt the legislative goals backed by commissioners.

Commissioners want to change state law to take over from the school board the jobs of locating, constructing and owning schools. They also want authority to give money to help charter schools build facilities and to require that four of the nine school board seats be elected at large.

Does the recent report examining the Wake County school transportation department show that former Superintendent Tony Tata shouldn't be blamed for this school year's problems?

As noted in today's article, the school board is scheduled to vote today on a $2.25 million plan to reorganize the transportation department. Based on the staff presentation showing that the department's structure is outdated, Republican board members say Tata was made a scapegoat by his critics.

"Superintendent Tata was trying to clean up something that had been happening in years past," said board member Deborah Prickett. "He was trying to do his best to fix it. It's not his fault."

UPDATE

The school board unanimously approved the reorganization plan.

It's time once again to apply for a seat in a Wake County magnet school.

As noted in today's article, the application period is now open through Jan. 25. You've got some magnet options and a restoration of some of the magnet selection criteria that had been dropped when the choice plan was in place.

Wake says that while the three new magnet schools and two revamped magnet schools are in "transition" for the 2013-14 school year, they'll be implementing their new programs their first year.