More to come later but the Wake County school board voted tonight to direct staff to try to provide transportation to the 470 preassigned students facing losing bus service.

The board passed 6-3 this motion: "WCPSS, shall provide transportation, when it can be provided with adjustments to existing routes, to all rising sixth- and ninth-graders currently receiving district transportation, who are pre-assigned without transportation for the 2012-13 school year OR offer that student a seat in one of the schools on his/her proximity choice list with transportation."

The board resisted language that would have required providing transportation, including potentially adding extra buses. The board also resisted amending the motion that would have  added 539 rising sixth- and ninth-graders who are at their current school as transfer students.

Susan Evans, Christine Kushner and Jim Martin were the dissenting votes.

The Wake County school board will deal with a variety of items at today's meeting, including whether to provide transportation to all rising sixth- and ninth-graders going to their feeder schools this fall.

During the work session, staff will give an update on how many of the preassigned students still don't have transportation and what can be done to accommodate them. The vote on the issue, requested by board member Jim Martin, will come at the regular meeting.

In response to board member Debra Goldman's complaints that Martin was being given more consideration than her for today's meeting, the board will also deal with her concerns about board and district transparency.

The decision to allow all students in Wake County middle schools and high schools be eligible to participate in interscholastic sports led to some heated rhetoric from the school board.

Under this revised policy adopted two weeks ago, a student at a middle school or high school that doesn't have an interscholastic sports program will now be able to try out at another school designated by the district. The change affects two magnet middle schools, the early colleges, the alternative schools, Hilburn Drive Academy and the two new single-sex leadership academies.

The debate got so heated that school board member Deborah Prickett accused board member Jim Martin of opposing the policy because he personally disliked her, which he denied.  The rhetoric caused board member Christine Kushner and board chairman Kevin Hill to urge their colleagues to show more decorum.

The leadership of the Wake County school board may have changed, but staff is still advocating changes that would eliminate classroom behavior from academic grades.

As noted in today's article, staff came back with the same recommended changes that stalled before the prior board in August. Staff is seeking the new school board's approval to go ahead with this revised grading policy and new R&P.

During Thursday's student achievement committee meeting, board member John Tedesco was the main proponent of the changes. Board member Jim Martin was the main critic.

Work will resume today on setting the ground work for a 2013 Wake County school construction bond issue.

The school board's facilities committee will continue discussion today on the draft capital planning issues that would frame the next construction program. The committee will also receive information on the process for determining needs for new schools.

One of the questions facing the school board and ultimately the county commissioners is whether to go for a referendum in spring or fall 2013.

A spring bond issue would have low voter turnout since nothing else is on the ballot but it would speed up when schools could be built. A fall bond issue would attract a larger turnout but could push the opening of new schools back by a year because of when the money would be available.

UPDATE

Today's meeting was cancelled becuase of a lack of a quorum.

School board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin attended the meeting. Evans said that Chris Malone, the committee chairman, called in sick. She said they waited until 4:30 p.m., 30 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, to see if board member Deborah Prickett would arrive.

Should the Wake County school system guarantee bus service to all students who choose to stay on their current feeder pattern?

It's an issue in the new student assignment that the school board has been wrestling with for the past several months. The discussion got personal at times last week with board member Jim Martin, the most outspoken proponent of providing the bus service, taking shots from board members Debra Goldman and Deborah Prickett.

For now, staff is continuing to review what bus service can be provided.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The Wake County school board came very close on Tuesday to not having adopted a budget request for the 2012-13 school year.

As noted in today's article, the 6-3 vote in favor the budget proposal was very much in doubt until the roll call vote. Every vote was needed because it took a two-thirds majority to waive a policy that limits Wake from using more than half its fund balance to balance the budget.

Signs of the budget being in trouble came early in the discussion when Democratic board members Kevin Hill and Jim Martin said they couldn't vote yes. They didn't feel that the requested $8.8 million increase from the Wake County Commissioners was enough in light of cuts in recent years.

Here's a quick summary of some other stuff from today's Wake County school board meeting that I'll try to get into more later.

The school board voted to table the contracts for the school resource officers for Cary and Raleigh for the 2013-14 school year. The vote, at least one of them, went along party lines. Staff is supposed to come back with more information.

The board voted 8-1 to approve a revised cocurricular and athletics policy whose most debated point  was about allowing students at schools without athletics, such as Hilburn Academy, compete at other schools that do offer them. In one of several heated personal comments during the meeting, board member Deborah Prickett accused colleague Jim Martin of not liking her personally as he criticized the policy.

Another dustup came up when board member Debra Goldman drew complaints from colleagues when she read a statement proposing that Wake be more transparent. It came during a presentation in which school staff said they're planning on broadcasting board meetings, instead of relying on WRAL, and setting up a search function similar to how the county does commission meetings.

More to come later, but the Wake County school board voted 6-3 tonight to approve Superintendent Tony Tata's $1.2 billion operating budget request.

The budget looked like it would be rejected until Republican board member Chris Malone crossed party lines to join the five Democrats in voting yes. His vote was needed because the budget required two-thirds approval to waive board policy allowing the district to use more than half its fund balance to balance the budget.

Malone called it a pragmatic budget, pointing to how state law requires it to be adopted by May 15 and how they were facing a new paradigm forcing the district to make tough budget decisions, including using $28.9 million in fund balance.

Is 190 extra teaching months of employment enough to deal with sharply underenrolled Wake County schools this fall?

The issue came up during last week's school budget discussion when school board member Jim Martin asked how staff determined which schools would get new STEM and Global Schools programs for this fall.

Martin said that the new student assignment plan is projected to result in 33 elementary schools being below 60 percent of their projected kindergarten capacity. Based on the data, Martin asked why some schools that were less underenrolled got the new programs.