Is it time to fill all of Wake County's magnet seats by random lottery?

That's the position articulated at last week's school board meeting by Jennifer Mansfield, a longtime critic of the magnet selection process and a leader of the Wake Schools Community Alliance. She urged the board to eliminate the guidelines which give priority to applicants from crowded schools.

Mansfield argued that the crowding component should be removed to give applicants an equal shot of getting accepted. Currently, only 10 percent of seats are randomly filled but even that comes with some strings that I'll get into later in the post.

Eric Blau will be stepping down from the Wake County school board's student assignment committee.

Blau said he's resigning because he's going to grad school in August and his wife will give birth in September. School board member Deborah Prickett said she nominated Blau to represent District 7 on the committee knowing he'd only be able to stay on for a short period.

Prickett has nominated Tracey Noble to replace Blau. Noble is a Brier Creek area parent who was actively involved in last winter's community engagement meetings that helped lead to the reassignment changes that impacted that part of northwest Raleigh.

Will there be any money saved from school transportation costs if the Wake County school system abandons the socioeconomic diversity policy?

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, supporters of scrapping the policy are predicting that going to community-based schools will lead to savings. But supporters of the diversity policy are skeptical about savings and warn that it could cost more to have transportation under community-based schools.

Wake says $45 million of its $56 million transportation budget comes from the state.

The first meeting of the Wake County school board's new student assignment committee has now been set for Thursday.

School board member John Tedesco, the committee chairman, said the meeting will focus on looking at a handful of node changes for the 2010-11 school year. This includes requests from Brier Creek families to be reassigned to the new Mills Park Middle School and to stay at Panther Creek High.

The meeting will take place as the final community members of the committee are being finalized. The membership so far represents a diverse mix of people, some of whom will be well known on the blog.

 SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR FINAL TWO COMMITTEE MEMBERS

CORRECTION: I HAD THE WRONG SUE KING LISTED. SEE INFO AT END OF POST.

A lack of unanimity may have doomed efforts by some parents to get the school board to reverse the conversion of Leesville Road Middle School to a year-round calendar.

As noted in today's article, school board members heard Monday both from Leesville parents who oppose conversion and those who are in support. Board members who supported conversion seized on that division.

"You hear two different things from two different groups," said board member Horace Tart.