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 Based on the staff presentation showing that the department's structure is outdated, Republican board members say Tata was made a scapegoat by his critics.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.

The Wake County school system is denying that members of the school board's Democratic majority are being unduly influenced by the Great Schools in Wake Coalition.

As noted in today's article, Wake's school board attorneys are telling AdvancED that majority members are making decisions based on their independent judgment and not because of the influence of Great Schools or any other advocacy group. The Wake County Taxpayers Association had charged GSIW had "extreme influence" on the majority, particularly the new board members.

"The allegation that the Board members who voted in favor of the June 19 student assignment directive did so because of 'extreme influence' from GSIW is suppositional and wrong," says this report.

Two years later, the arguments are the same but those who are in control are different as the Wake County school board decides on who will be the next schools superintendent.

As noted in today's article, members of the Democratic board majority say they'd prefer to hire a superintendent with education experience. Republican board members say the search should include looking at non-educators as well, although they can't do much about it being in the minority.

“It’s really going to depend on how much experience they want in the educational field and how much experience in the corporate or military field they can tolerate,” said outgoing Republican board member Chris Malone.

The controlled-choice plan bit the dust officially on Tuesday with the 5-4 vote by the Wake County school board to move back to an address-based plan for the 2013-14 school year.

As noted in today's article, Democratic board members argued that the choice plan was too expensive to maintain. They argued the new plan was a good hybrid of the choice plan and a base plan while incorporating long-sought concepts such as grandfathering for all students at their current school.

But Republican board members argued the choice plan wasn't given a fair chance to succeed and that changing assignment plans again promoted instability in the community.

Hunter Elementary School, a magnet school near downtown Raleigh, looks like it will be among the 13 Wake County schools that will have a full enrollment cap placed on it today for the rest of the school year.

But the discussion last week about where the capped out base children for Hunter would go gives more insight into the differences between the board members about how students should be assigned. It could serve as an another example of what direction the new 2014-15 student assignment plan will take.

Last week, staff added Hunter to the original list of 12 schools it was recommending for a full cap for the rest of the 2012-13 school year. Students who are capped out of Hunter would be given the option of Oak Grove, Timber Drive and Washington elementary schools.

The difference between a guarantee and a priority could be a big deal for Wake County families who apply for magnet schools or during the first transfer application period next year.

Based on last week's discussion, staff has placed in both the magnet and selection criteria a priority for applicants who are not in an entry grade to go to the same school as a sibling. This came after board member Susan Evans asked about adding this kind of priority.

There's also now officially a transfer priority that fleshes out wording in the draft assignment plan about dealing with requests from rising 6th- and 9th-graders for feeders from the choice plan.

It looks like there's still going to be a priority for Wake County students from high-performing nodes to get into magnet schools, but there won't be a transfer priority for applicants from low-performing schools to get into high-performing ones.

Both issues became intertwined during last week's student assignment work session as board members and staff worked through the details of the draft 2013-14 student assignment plan. The final vote will come during Tuesday's meeting.

During last week's discussion, you had discussion about how far the board should go to keep students from leaving some schools and who should get priority for magnet access.

Barring any last-minute changes next week, it looks like the new year-round calendar option for Lynn Road Elementary base families will be Wakefield Elementary.

But the discussion on the issue during Tuesday's Wake County school board student assignment work session raises issues about the role year-round calendar options should play in the district. Should Wake continue to not offer year-round options that are considered more attractive than the base school?

The discussion also raised the prospect that the school system may at some point convert Wakefield Elementary back to a traditional calendar.