Speaking of Wake County school board advisory councils, a fairly well-known local figure is about to be reappointed to another term.

Tuesday's Wake County school board meeting agenda includes a vote to reappoint Diana Bader to a three-year term on the District 9 Board Advisory Council. School board member Bill Fletcher nominated Bader to stay on as at-large member.

According to her new nomination form, Bader was appointed to the BAC in March 2011. She was an outspoken critic of the former board majority.

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is mobilizing to get the new Wake County student assignment plan to include the diversity-related assignments.

In an email message dated Sept. 12, GSIW chairwoman Yevonne Brannon tells people that her discussions with school board members was "not encouraging." Brannon writes about a "board member who wants what we want but is too weak to push for it and too afraid to step up to the plate, because he is worried about community push back."

Brannon writes that "another board member who doesn’t seem to 'agree' about how to fix diversity-how to have balanced schools.....he seems to believe kids can choose out. After some discussion he agreed to 'think it over.'"

Here's the dolphin email exchange between Wake County school board member Susan Evans and the leadership of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition that was referenced in a recent Triangle Politics column.

For the backstory, Allison Backhouse forwarded to board members and staff a March 7 email that was sent to Evans, fellow school board member Christine Kushner and several GSIW leaders. One sentence included how an 8-year-old wrote that "a dolphin breaths through an a--hole on the top of its head."

Evans replied back via her personal email account that "I think TT may be a dolphin :)," referring to Superintendent Tony Tata.

Some familiar names are on the list of people being nominated Tuesday for placement on Wake County school board advisory councils.

The nominees for school board member Jim Martin's BAC include former Assistant Superintendent Mike Burriss and Ann Overton. Diana Bader has been nominated to serve on school board member Debra Goldman's BAC. Karey Harwood has been nominated for board vice chairman Keith Sutton's BAC.

Some of the new BAC members were nominated by other people.

CORRECTION

Harwood was nominated to school board vice chairman Keith Sutton's BAC.

The new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board is now in place following a packed swearing-in ceremony.

After being sworn in, the new members talked about focusing on improving education for Wake’s 146,000 students, listening to the families and trying to go beyond the 5-4 votes on major issues that took place over the past two years.

“If this board comes together with the common denominator of all children all schools, we’ll continue to have a very successful 16th largest school district in the nation,” said school board member Kevin Hill.

Here's more about what was said at last week's OCR meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church.

Click here for an earlier post about the meeting. Most of the speakers and the crowd were opposed to the school board majority's elimination of the diversity policy.

The meeting kicked off with the Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist, getting laughs and applause from the crowd when he quipped that the church was "a very neutral site by the way." That was in response to the complaints from the school system about holding the meeting at the church.

The placement guidelines are staying the same but the training and explanation of the role of teacher judgment is changing for advanced middle school math classes in Wake County in the 2011-12 school year.

Ken Branch, senior director of middle school programs, explained today to the school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force that they don't have the data yet to make changes to the placement guidelines. But they are putting more details into the placement guidelines to make it clearer to teachers, parents and students.

But Branch also said that they're making it clear to teachers that professional judgment will only be used to place students into the courses who might not be considered ready by EVAAS. That could address concerns that some teachers have used their judgment even under the new guidelines to keep kids out who are considered by EVAAS to be ready.

UPDATE

Click here to view the 2011-12 placement guidelines. You'll see how much more detailed they are than the 2010-11 guidelines.

A discussion Thursday about how to help improve the performance of African American male students turned into yet another fight over school diversity in Wake County.

School board member Keith Sutton gave a presentation during Thursday's ED task force meeting highlighting the racial achievement and graduation rate gaps between black and white students. Click here and here to see what was handed out.

The ensuing Q&A turned into a discussion of the elimination of the diversity policy, with some shouting and heated words.

New Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata got a first-hand look Tuesday at what school board meetings will be like, from emotional public speakers to bickering by board members.

Most of the 39 speakers who signed up railed against the school board over the student reassignment plan and the elimination of the use of socioeconomic diversity. Some speakers got even more personal, particularly  directing their attacks at school board member John Tedesco.

Several speakers welcomed Tata. But Tata was also warned by speakers to restore diversity or else he and the school district would face dire consequences.

It took a lot longer than Wake County school board members expected Tuesday night to work their way through the 2011-12 student reassignment plan.

As noted in today's article, the school board wound up holding votes on all 50 items instead of doing one vote. It was due to the Democrats objecting to most of the moves that went beyond filling Walnut Creek Elementary School.

School board member Kevin Hill pointed back to the Oct. 5 resolution, which he said meant only making minor adjustments to the third year of the three-year assignment plan.