It looks like all 105 Wake County elementary schools will get a security feature that's currently only found at a handful of magnet schools.

As noted in today's article, the Wake County school board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on an $835,000 contract to pay for one unarmed private security guard to be assigned to each elementary school for the rest of the school year.

School board chairman Keith Sutton said that school administrators are budgeting $2.375 million into the 2013-14 school year budget to keep the guards year-round.

Does the Wake County school system need to have a policy for how law enforcement interviews and arrests students on campus?

The school board was scheduled to vote on giving this new policy approval on first reading on Oct. 30 until board member Jim Martin interceded. As a result, the policy was tabled for up to 90 days for further review by the policy committee.

Martin, chairman of the policy committee, had given the policy his approval at the Sept. 25 committee meeting. But he raised concerns after getting in contact with Jason Langberg, an attorney for Advocates for Children's Services, which works with students who are suspended and who are arrested.

Officially, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition has been silent about the firing last week of Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata.

But individually, GSIW members have been writing letters to the editor praising the Democratic school board majority's decision to fire Tata. Click here, here and here for examples of letters to the editor written by GSIW members such as Karey Harwood, Sharon Eckard, Swain Wood, Heather Koons and Adrienne Lumpkin.

One piece was written by GSIW member Jason Langberg, an attorney for Advocates for Children's Services. His piece appeared Friday on the website of Parents Across America, a national group that supports diversity and opposes the expansion of high-stakes testing and charter schools.

UPDATE

Swain Wood says he's not a member of Great Schools. He's on Yevonne Brannon's email action list and is the husband of GSIW activist Karey Harwood. He worked on board member Susan Evans' campaign last fall and was the lead attorney in the Open Meetings lawsuit filed against the school board in 2010.

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is mobilizing to get the new Wake County student assignment plan to include the diversity-related assignments.

In an email message dated Sept. 12, GSIW chairwoman Yevonne Brannon tells people that her discussions with school board members was "not encouraging." Brannon writes about a "board member who wants what we want but is too weak to push for it and too afraid to step up to the plate, because he is worried about community push back."

Brannon writes that "another board member who doesn’t seem to 'agree' about how to fix diversity-how to have balanced schools.....he seems to believe kids can choose out. After some discussion he agreed to 'think it over.'"

Is it a conspiracy or coincidence that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is spending a lot of its time investigating various complaints filed against the Wake County school system?

As noted in today's article, OCR has used its discretion to launch investigations of three complaints against Wake in the past two years. The scope of the investigations means OCR is looking at how students are assigned, how they’re suspended, what athletics opportunities they’re provided and whether they’re getting important notices in Spanish.

Depending on your point of view, they're welcome probes or a case of the feds butting in too much into Wake County's business.

Track My Steps is hosting a public forum tonight on the state of education in Eastern Wake County.

Forum organizers say there is a "crisis in public education in eastern Wake County and that they want to "break the silence on education inequality." The forum will focus on the challenges faced by Eastern Wake students and parents in the areas of early education, student discipline, student/parent rights and resources, course selection/availability and student achievement.
 
"Eastern Wake residents are calling for education reform in their part of Wake County to create a better Wake County," according to the press release. "Participants will introduce a plan of action to change the perception of education in Eastern Wake."

Will the Wake County school board require changes in the way school resource officers operate in order for them to continue to patrol the district's high schools and middle schools?

The school board will vote today on these contracts with Raleigh and Cary to provide school resource officers for the 2012-13 school year. The vote comes amid lobbying efforts by several advocacy organizations to get the school system to cut back on the role of SROs, from what they're armed with to what interaction they can have with students on discipline issues.

In an email Monday to school board members, Jason Langberg of Advocates for Children Services wrote that approving the contracts "without more careful consideration of the >issue of SROs in WCPSS would be irresponsible, undemocratic, and arguably, a violation of multiple Board policies."

UPDATE/CORRECTION

Click here to view the email sent to board members on Monday. Corrected post to say letter from N.C. Juvenile Defender.

The school board voted 5-4 to table the Cary SRO contract. it went along party lines with the Democrats voting yes and the Republicans voting against tabling.

The board also voted to table the Raleigh SRO contract.

Wake County school board vice chairman Keith Sutton will face the heat as a guest at tonight's community engagement meeting sponsored by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children.

Agenda topics will include an update on Walnut Creek Elementary School, bell schedule changes, the impact of round one of the student assignment plan on Southeast Raleigh and the school-to-prison pipeline.

The meeting comes after Sutton has faced criticism from some CCCAAC members about the demographic composition of Walnut Creek's enrollment.

Is the Wake County school system undergoing "militarization" under the tenure of Superintendent Tony Tata?

That's a charge leveled in this Dec. 16 article by Jason Langberg and Lewis Pitts from the liberal Advocates for Children's Services. The article points to Tata's military career, the requirement of Junior ROTC for the new single-sex leadership academies and Wake's recent involvement in cybersecurity competitions.

The authors start by calling the Occupy Wall Street movement an "education justice movement." The piece charges that public education has "undergone a corporate coup" with the "mega-buck mafia’s buyout of public education."

The message coming from Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting is to accept nothing less than 100 percent placement of qualified middle school students in Algebra I.

As noted in today's article, staff said that 85.2 percent of eighth graders projected by EVAAS to be ready to take Algebra I have already been placed for the 2011-12 school year, up from 61.1 percent last year.

Central Office will work with the middle schools to get that placement rate as close as they can to 100 percent before traditional-calendar schools start next week.