Wake County school board chairman Kevin Hill is defending staff members against fellow Democratic board member Jim Martin's allegations of political partisanship in the 2012-13 school bell schedules.

The issue is the changes recommended by staff, and later approved by board, to the original bell schedule proposal. In a March 27 email, Martin charged that "only schools in districts represented by Republican members of the Board were changed."

"I am not pleased with the fact that there still is too much partisanship in Board decisions," Martin wrote. " It appears to me that this is another example."

Thre are a bunch of changes to the latest version of the peoposed 2012-13 Wake County school bell schedules.

I'll go into more detail later but some highlights include staff recommending no changes from the 2011-12 schedule to several elementary schools: Briarclff, Kingswood, Lead Mine Elementary, Lincoln Heights and Sycamore.

Davis Drive Elementary would start 10 minutes earlier and go from 7:35 a.m to 2:05 p.m. instead of the proposed switch from a 7: 45 a.m. start to a 9:15 a.m. start.

Green, Wendell and Zebulon elementary schools would still change but not go from a 7:45 a.m start to a 9:15 a.m start. They'd both now operate from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

UPDATE

Click here to view Wake's press release. Staff is scaling back the projected savings from $6 million a year to $4.8 million because the changes announced today would keep 33 more buses on the road than the prior proposal.

The revised bell schedule list was approved 6-2 with board chairman Kevin Hll and board member Jim Martin the no votes.

Martin said the new schedules should have been provided to parents before the end of round one of the school selection process.

Martin also said he was concerned that the plan has so many schools starting after 9 a.m. because of the impact on working families. His amendment to require schools that open after 9 a.m. to offer before-school care died from a lack of a second.

Some Wake County schools are seeing noticeable changes in their percentages of low-income students because of the student assignment changes adopted by the school board in February.

For instance, Davis Drive Elementary's percentage of students receiving federally subsidized lunches fell from 18.9 percent last year to 6.6 percenet this year. For Reedy Creek Elementary, it rose from 41.4 percent last year to 53.3 percent this year.

This came after the board moved what was projected to be 175 students from Davis Drive to to Reedy Creek, Combs and Smith elementary schools. The moves were supposed to to be proximity related so students would attend a closer school.

New Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata made the rounds today, meeting with Gov. Bev Perdue and members of the General Assembly.

School board member Carolyn Morrison, who accompanied Tata today, said they were meet-and-greets with no substantive issues discussed. In addition to the usual politics of a superintendent meeting the governor, you also had the backdrop of Perdue having criticized the Wake school board for ending the diversity policy.

Today's meetings are part of an effort by Tata to spend a half-day with each of the school board members. The board members are taking Tata around to meet with various groups.

There's plenty of empty seats at today's Wake County school board meeting.

Only 35 of the 153 vouchers were handed out for today's meeting. That's far less than the crowds that backed up into the hallway at recent meetings.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST 

The school board appointed Ed Gainor today to be the interim principal of Green Elementary School in North Raleigh.

Gainor has been taking interim principal jobs since he retired as principal of Leesvlle Road Elementary in 2007. He'll be at Green from Oct. 27 to Dec. 21, with a salary equivalent to $105,387 a year.

Gainor had filled in as Green's interim principal for a few months last year.

No word on what happened to Green Principal Shelly Watson. 

We've got some very sad news to report.

A 6-year-old girl died today after she was struck by a vehicle. She had just gotten off a school bus shortly after 1:30 p.m.

The Green Elementary student was struck near the intersection of North Hills and Hillock drives in Raleigh by a vehicle driven by 83-year-old woman.

UPDATE

Click here for the online story. According to witnesses, the driver ignored the bus stop arm and flashing signals.

It's not your imagination if your kid's year-round class size looks larger than normal.

As noted in today's article, some year-round schools have classes of more than 30 students while others are in the high 20s. The state's budget shortfall is being blamed for much of the problem for the larger class sizes.

"We don't have a lot of flexibility with staffing as we have had in the past," said Shelly Watson, principal of Green Elementary School in North Raleigh.