Former Wake County Superintendent Del Burns is stepping back into the public eye to issue candidate endorsements and to speak out on the state of the school system.

In a press release today, Jack Nichols, a Democratic candidate for Wake County commissioner, announced he's been endorsed by three former Wake superintendents, including Burns. Nichols has been a harsh critic of the Republican majority on the school board and is running against Republican incumbent Paul Coble

"Jack Nichols is a consensus builder, and understands that when it comes to our children and our tax dollars, we must make decisions based on data and research, not ideologically driven agendas,” Burns said in the press release.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

There's now a plan on the table for Wake County schools to still have time for professional learning teams for the 2010-11 school year.

Staff laid out at Tuesday's student achievement committee meeting a list of options that individual schools can pick from to hold the time once Wake Wednesdays/Wacky Wednesdays come to an end next month.

The full school board could sign off on the options Tuesday.

There will be a leadership change in a few months at Wake NCAE, the group which represents 5,000 Wake County school system employees.

Tama Bouncer, a music teacher at Swift Creek Elementary School, will become Wake NCAE president in July. She will take over for Jennifer Lanane, who couldn't serve again because of term limits.

Could Wake County teachers be meeting in the mornings this fall instead of in the afternoons for their professional learning community time?

That's an idea being explored by school board member John Tedesco. In that scenario, teachers would meet in the mornings with the possibility of delaying the start of classes.

Whether that option will be doable this fall is a question.

UPDATE

See end of post for links to three of the school PLT presentations.

Borrowing a phrase from Dirty Harry, is the Wake County school system feeling lucky now?

As noted in today's article, school leaders aren't thrilled that they're facing $20 million in state cuts for the coming fiscal year. But they're at least relieved that, for now, they're not looking at teacher layoffs.

"The cuts are pretty severe but I'm glad that Wake County still has some flexibility," said Keith Sutton, chairman of the school board's finance committee.

It looks like hundreds of Wake County teachers will be facing job limbo for the new few months as part of the school district's efforts to deal with $20 million in state cuts.

Central office implemented a hiring freeze on Monday for the 2010-11 school year as one of the responses to the new 3 percent state cut. Only ESL and special education teachers are exempted from the freeze.

The freeze means teachers on one-year contracts can't be rehired for next year until the budget situation becomes clearer. Jennifer Lanane, president of Wake NCAE, said 800 teachers fit into that category.

Did an eighth-grade science teacher at West Lake Middle School go too far in the comments she and her friends made on a public section of her Facebook page?

As noted in today's article, Melissa Hussain has been suspended with pay during an investigation into complaints from parents and students about the Facebook comments. Copies of comments provided by parents before Hussain restricted access on her Facebook page show that it was a pretty tense environment.

"Today a student left a brand new bible on my desk with an anonymous card that said 'Merry Christmas; with 'Christ' underlined and bolded," Hussain wrote. "I can't believe the cruelty and ignorance of people sometimes."

Wake NCAE President Jennifer Lanane is calling on the Wake County school board "to continue the partnership between stake holders that has traditionally produced the strong school system currently in place."

In a press release sent this afternoon, Lanane says "a true partnership only exists when all partners recognize the significance of each other's roles." She urges the school board not to work in isolation.

The press release can be interpreted as an attempt to persuade the new school board members to pay attention to Wake NCAE, which has 5,000 members.

Wake NCAE isn't giving up efforts to lobby the new Wake County school board majority to back away from the changes it's making.

In a blog post today, Wake NCAE President Jennifer Lanane told her members to attend a meeting next week to learn about "next action steps."  She tells her members that at Tuesday's school board meeting "some extraordinary decisions were made that will affect Wake County children for a long time."

Lanane and other Wake NCAE members had unsuccessfully urged the board to keep the weekly Wednesday early releases. She told the new board that they don't trust them.

The outgoing school board members left without throwing any real verbal bombs today as they were showered with awards and praise.

The outgoing board members spent much of their final comments thanking their families and school administrators. They also stood behind the decisions they made.

"Parents haven’t really liked what was done," said school board vice chairman Horace Tart. "But we always did what we did with the children in mind. That was the big picture."