Wake County Commissioner Tony Gurley went toe to toe with school board member Jim Martin in a lengthy discussion after the end of today's joint meeting.

Gurley had complained during the meeting about the school system using county funding to build up its fund balance. Gurley has been a longtime critic of the school system having a fund balance, saying that they should leave it up to the commissioners to cover emergencies.

What irked Gurley is that school administrators project they can replenish the fund balance by $20 million to bring it up to $25 million for the 2013-14 fiscal budget.

More to come later, but details were unveiled today for a proposed vocational high school that would be run under a partnership of the Wake County school system and Wake Technical Community College.

The career and technical education high school would open in August 2013 and offer courses in areas such as air conditioning, heating, refrigeration, biopharmaceuticals, collision repair, cosmetology, plumbing, game development and welding. Pending an approved lease, it would be located at the former Coca-Cola Bottling Facility at 2200 South Wilmington Street in Raleigh.

In addition to working with high school students, the facility would offer evening technical courses for adults.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR HANDOUT ABOUT CTE HIGH SCHOOL

It took eight months, but the Wake County school board was finally able to agree on passing a middle school math placement policy.

As noted in today's article, the policy got over the hump when staff proposed a number of changes to both the policy and the placement criteria to win over the support of Democratic board members Christine Kushner and Keith Sutton to form a majority with Republicans on the issue. Click here for the adopted policy and here for the revised placement criteria.

"We raised our concerns and staff came up with some good suggestions to them that it was enough for me to support the policy," Kushner said.

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.

Tonight's Wake County school board member comments had everything from prayer to complaints about the new student assignment plan to questioning the demographics of the groups at Pieces of Gold.

School board member Jim Martin said that the student groups performing at Pieces of Gold were more segregated than he had ever seen. He also said the performance showed the disparity in resources for arts programs at schools.

Later, school board member Susan Evans said she had to voice the concerns she was hearing from her constituents about the first round of the school selection process.

The Wake County school board may make it possible for teachers to recommend that students be placed in a lower math class than recommended by the data.

During today's school board work session, board member Jim Martin said he's still not a fan of the new middle school math placement policy. But Martin said that if they're going to do it they should modify the wording so that a teacher can recommend a lower placement and not just the parent.

The board didn't object to including that wording. This is an example where school board member John Tedesco's absence today could impact the result.

UPDATE

The revised version of the math placement policy was approved 5-3 with board chairman Kevin Hill and board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin voting no.

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.

Should the Wake County school board open meetings with a prayer?

Email records indicate that the Republican board members are more receptive to the idea of having prayer to open meetings. Democratic board member Jim Martin, who was sworn in on the U.S. Constitution instead of a Bible, cautioned against the idea.

The conversations started when school board member Debra Goldman emailed the board and board attorney Ann Majestic on Jan. 19 asking what Wake's policies were in relation to prayer at meetings.

There's a heated argument about what position the leadership of the African American community should take about Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh.

A message posted on the Coalition for Concerned Citizens for African American Children's listserv questions why school board vice chairman Keith Sutton and some other black leaders "support the opening of Walnut Creek, a segregated school." The writer also criticizes the recent school board decision to offer signing bonuses and performance pay for the school's staff.

It's unclear who's the author of the message. The person forwarded it to CCCAAC President Calla Wright for her to post on the listserv.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR CCCAAC'S RESPONSE TO DAN COLEMAN

Could the Wake County school board make one more change to the student assignment plan for this fall?

The only change the board made last week was to accept the staff recommendation to increase the percentage of magnet seats at Poe Elementary School. But school board member Jim Martin unsuccessfully tried to call for a vote on having staff keep magnet schools within their projected percentage of magnet seats.

Wake has divided the magnet schools into three groups.