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

The new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board may adopt a tougher line on handling public records requests.

Members of the former Republican board majority were subject to many public records requests for their personal and school district emails from their critics. Now the Democratic members are finding themselves subject to the same kinds of requests.

People who make requests now get the first 100 pages of copies free. They pay 10 centers for each additional page. But now they may also have to pay for the cost of staff time to handle the requests.

Are the new Democratic members of the Wake County school board doing their job to make sure the student assignment plan is ready or are they micromanaging the process?

That was a point of contention between Republican and Democratic board members during Tuesday's review of the assignment plan. The first half of the meeting dealt with a look at how the school system is handling its outreach efforts, particularly informing parents about their options and getting them to register if they're new.

Some tense words were exchanged over the issue of whether school registrars and data managers are able to do the job of getting students registered and informed about their options.

The Wake County school board filled two top-level jobs and a principal's vacancy tonight.

Christine Mulder was hired for the newly renamed position of chief of family and public engagement. The job was previously called chief of communications but is being revamped as part of Superintendent Tony Tata's shakeup of his leadership team.

Her predecessor, Michael Evans, resigned last month.

UPDATE

Mulder's salary is $132,500. Baker's salary is $120,000.