School board member Ron Margiotta made another unsuccessful pitch today for the current board to halt spending more dollars on the Forest Ridge High project.

Margiotta said they should stop spending any additional dollars on Forest Ridge while staff reviews other sites. He pointed out that the new board members also have concerns about the Forest Ridge site.

But the issue brought up by board members again is the lack of time.

It looks like you can add the Forest Ridge High site to the list of battles that will divide new and old school board members starting in December.

As noted in today's article, the current board members, with the exception of Ron Margiotta, told staff to go ahead with plans for using the Forest Ridge High site. But Chris Malone said Wake should be prepared for a change in that plan when he and other new board members take office.

"They should have stopped today," Malone said. "We're going to push ahead and make them stop it."

Enloe High School's bell schedule will change again and it could impact other schools in the process.

While the details are still being finalized, Enloe is expected to add another 10 minutes to the school day for the 2009-10 school year. This comes on top of the 10 minutes that the school board had agreed to add to Enloe's day as part of the districtwide bell schedule changes for this fall.

The new Enloe change creates additional transportation challenges.

The question of who has the longest bus rides was also on the minds of school board members on Tuesday.

As noted in today's article, staff stressed that voluntary magnet kids account for a majority of the longest bus rides in the district. But students who are bused for diversity also are in the group with the longest rides.

Bob Snidemiller, senior director for transportation, explained that the longest 5 percent of bus ride times have an average one-way ride of 64 minutes.

There's some good news for families today.

Don Haydon, chief facilities and operations officer, said today that Wake will not raise school meal prices for the upcoming school year. In December, staff had warned that increases would be likely for the 2009-10 school year.

“[Marilyn Moody, senior director for nutrition] thought this would not be the time to tax people with another meal increase," Haydon told the school board.

Haydon said that child nutrition will dip into its reserves again to make up for the deficit at the end of this fiscal year. 

It's apparently not easy getting modular classrooms moved quickly, as the folks at Panther Creek High School in Cary can attest.

School administrators told the board this week that the projected completion date for installing 22 modular classrooms at Panther Creek is now Jan. 30. The original projected date had been Aug. 15.

Back in September, administrators said they hoped to have the units ready by Dec. 18.

It looks like schools may get new computers before they get new roofs or HVAC systems.

Even though no major construction projects need to be delayed for now, school administrators said Tuesday that some smaller items need to be suspended. That list had included the district's computer replacement program.

But staff pulled the suspension of the computers off the list when school board members complained.

"I was thinking of something [chief facilities and operations officer] Don Haydon has said. We've been conditioned to accept things that five years ago we would not have. People have made it work."

The above quote is what Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning, told school board members at a facilities committee meeting two weeks ago.

Now what do you think he was referring to?

It's probably safe to assume that a lot of people are wondering which schools might be recommended for conversion back to a traditional calendar.

As noted in today's article, no specific schools were named at Tuesday's school board meeting. But at this point it's only likely that a few of the 22 converted schools will be proposed.

This handout from Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting provides some clues as to where the staff and board will look at first. The key column to focus on in attachment 1 is which converted schools would still be under capacity if they were on a traditional calendar.

It looks like the poor economy is benefitting the school district on the hiring front.

Maurice Boswell, assistant superintendent for human resources, said today that they only have 21.5 teaching vacancies, much less than normal for this time of year. He said it's been easier this year recruiting the more than 950 new teachers hired for this school year.

If the vacancies aren't filled soon, Boswell said they'll head to Florida with employment contracts in hand. Several big Florida districts such as Broward, Dade and Orange counties have been laying off teachers due to declining enrollment.

Yesterday, Don Haydon, chief facilities and operations officer, said they only have 20 bus driver vacancies. They normally have around 80 openings this time of year.