What responsibility does the Wake County school system have in providing transportation to preassigned rising sixth- and ninth-graders who don't have bus service this fall?

As noted in today's article, the school board voted to direct staff to, when possible, modify existing bus routes to accommodate students or to offer them a spot at a school on their proximity list that would give them transportation.

But that motion stops short of guaranteeing bus service to their feeder school. And that motion only extends to students who are receiving bus service this year and would lose it this fall, not transfer students who now don't get bus service.

The Wake County school system placed 74.1 percent of applicants into their first-choice schools in the first round, according to an update on the student assignment plan presented at tonight's school board meeting.

Staff now says that 14,121 of the 19,046 applicants got placed. Also, Wake placed 91.4 percent of rising kindergarten students into their first choice.

Wake is now saying that only 233 students were placed off magnet school waiting lists into their first-choice magnet school last week. The number mentioned the last few weeks was 700 seats to be filled from people leaving magnet schools during the first round of proximity choice.

We're now up to 7,385 students who had submitted their Wake County school choices for this fall as of 5 p.m. today.

James Overman, head of the student assignment task force, said in a press release that there were some middle schools with split feeder patterns that were not displaying both high school paths. He said this issue has been resolved, stressing that no feeder patterns have been changed since the plan was adopted Oct. 18.

In addition, school officials say that capacity numbers — the amount of seats available at each grade level — were set after the magnet selection results were calculated, and will not change during the choice selection period. Overman said the numbers will increase as parents request changes from their pre-assigned feeder pattern.

Wake also has developed a PDF file listing the top 10 tips for the choice selection process.

The issue of Michael Alves' unannounced private meeting with the new Democratic members of the Wake County school board won't seem to go away.

The issue was revisited with some heated comments during Tuesday's board meeting. The discussion, more of which is detailed later in the post, shows the continuing wariness between the Republican and Democratic members.

More recently, Terry Stoops, director of education studies for the conservative John Locke Foundation, brought up the issue in a Thursday blog post.

The potential impact of the feeder patterns on school demographics is one reason members of the Democratic majority on the Wake County school board are raising concerns about the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, Democratic school board member Jim Martin cited his concerns about Carnage Middle School as an example of how the feeders can change a school. Martin said he's familiar with Carnage because his son is a magnet student there.

The particular issue at Carnage is that Walnut Creek Elementary will feed into the school starting in the 2012-13 school year. With Walnut Creek being such a large part of the feeder, he said it could hurt Carnage's Gifted and Talented/AG Basics program.

The Wake County magnet school application period is opening on Monday amid some questions and changes about how it will be affected by the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, you've got changes in the timing of the application period and the selection criteria. And, perhaps even more importantly, you've got changes involving feeder patterns and no longer being able to "decline" your magnet acceptance like you did in the past.

The application period is opening two months earlier than normal to accommodate the start of the Jan. 17 application period for the non=magnet schools.

The magnet school selection criteria are being revised to fall in line with Wake County's new student assignment plan.

The new guidelines aren't explicitly set out in the plan but members of the student assignment task force walked me through them for today's article.

The two biggest changes are a specific priority for students from high-performing nodes and the elimination of the practice of setting aside 10 percent of seats to be randomly filled.

The new Wake County student assignment plan will lead to changes in how new schools are built and filled.

As shown in this handout from Tuesday's school board meeting, the plan would have elementary schools open K-3 instead of the current system of opening K-5. Middle schools would only open with sixth-grade instead of the current practice of also having seventh-grade. New high schools would still open with only ninth- and 10th-grades.

The schools would pick up their additional grades as the kids age up.

Is it good or bad for Wake County to be compared to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system?

On one hand, Charlotte-Mecklenburg received on Tuesday the 2011 Broad Prize, earning $550,000 in scholarships in recognition of its efforts to help low-income and minority students succeed and graduate.

On the other hand, you had Wake school board member Keith Sutton wanting reassurances on Tuesday that the new student assignment plan won't have Wake "wind up like Charlotte-Mecklenburg."

Some Wake County parents upset about their proposed feeder patterns have room for hope.

Wake Superintendent Tony Tata told school board members on Tuesday they're mindful of the situations at elementary schools that currently feed into multiple high schools. Since the new plan calls for one high school for each elementary school, the potential change in high school assignments has riled a number of families.

Tata singled out the example of North Ridge Elementary School, where about 44 percent of students eventually go to Millbrook High and 41 percent eventually go to Sanderson High. He said they're working to modify the feeder patterns for those kinds of cases.