The Coalition of Concerned Concerned Citizens for African American Children is backing creation of a new career and technical education high school for Wake County, but is also saying they "are concerned about how this program is being designed and implemented."

In this press release sent late Monday, the CCCAAC questions whether the former Coca-Coca Bottling factory on Wilmington Street is the right location. The group asks "would the Gov. Morehead site be better, or perhaps a site closer to eastern Wake?"

Using the Gov. Morehead School could prevent it from also housing students from the single-sex leadership academies, a program that CCCAAC has opposed.

Is the Governor Morehead School for the Blind the right place to house some of the students in the Wake County school system's new single-sex leadership academies?

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata told state legislators on Tuesday that he's been negotiating with the state Department of Public Instruction to lease space at the Morehead School to house 300 students. It's part of State Schools Superintendent June Atkinson's ongoing efforts to find alternative funding to avoid closing the Morehead School.

Later at Tuesday's school board meeting, Tata provided more detail to board members. He said the plan is to house the middle school students from the leadership academies at the Morehead School.

I'll go into more detail later, but here's an abbreviated recap of Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's press conference today.

Tata said he's hoping to soon reach a deal to lease the Governor Morehead School for the Blind site. He said the deal will help raise money to save the program while also providing Wake with "prime" space for a new school in that part of Raleigh.

Tata said the 3,541 magnet school applications received so far is comparable to this same time period in February. As to people complaining about seeing only a handful of seats being listed as available at some schools, Tata said the nunber is no different than in past years but they're now being transparent.

What that number reflects Tata said, is the number of seats open to students who are not yet in the magnet program. The number of openings looks artificially low because they're no longer making rising sixth- and ninth-graders in magnet schools apply to move on to the next school in their feeder.

Tata said the recent AdvancED review team visit went well and he's expecting a good report in the next 30 days.