Should the Wake County school board reallocate money from the last bond issue to pay for upgrading Athens Drive High School's athletic stadium improvements or continue to leave it as part of the next construction program?

The Athens Drive community has been in an uproar since Wake County Commissioner Paul Coble questioned at last week's joint meeting including the project as part of the next capital improvement program. Parents spoke at Monday's commissioners meeting about why they felt the project needs to be funded.

Coble's response Monday was to question a request from the school system to reallocate money from the 2006 capital improvement program. He suggested the school board tap into that fund instead to pay for Athens Drive.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, has got some definite plans in mind should the state House also sign off on the bill letting them take over school construction from the school board.

Senate Bill 236 would give commissioners in nine counties the ability to oversee all facets of school construction, including locating, purchasing, owning, building, maintaining and renovating schools. Bryan said it's his intention to press for the county to assume the majority of the construction responsibilities from the Wake County school system.

Bryan said he'd like to see how they can merge the county and school system's construction departments. The county would need more than its current staff to oversee the $1.8 billion in school property and handle projects from future bond issues.

it's safe to say that the ongoing struggle over who will control school construction in Wake County had a noticeable impact on Thursday's joint meeting of the school board and county commissioners.

As noted in today's article, several heated exchanges between school board members and commissioners took place as they discussed this $939.9 million school construction program. Officials readily acknowledged that the Senate's passage of Senate Bill 236 on Wednesday helped raise the emotions.

"You’ve got some lingering tension over the victory we had in the Senate yesterday,” said Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, in an interview. “We’ve got to come together to get a bond passed.”

More to come later, but there was an abrupt end to today's joint Wake County school board and board of commissioners meeting on the bond issue.

School board chairman Keith Sutton adjourned the meeting early to cut off the heated exchange between Commissioner Paul Coble and school board member Jim Martin. Coble accused the school board of not showing how it was going to stretch dollars to save money while Martin accused him of not making honest statements to the public.

In one particularly heated moment, Martin asked Coble to say how he'd save money. Martin asked if Coble wanted mandatory year-round, saying he'd offer to share with him all the letters from parents who hate the idea.

Are state Senate Republicans just giving some county governments more flexibility over school construction or are they trying to exact more political payback on the Democratic-led Wake County school board?

As noted in today's article, Senate Democrats charged that Republican legislators were deliberately going after the Wake school board in Senate Bill 236. Senate Republicans denied politics were involved, just as they denied that politics was behind Senate Bill 325, the Wake school board redistricting bill.

The bill comes as the Wake County school board and county commissioners meet this morning to go over a proposed $939.9 million school construction program that would largely be funded by the fall bond issue.

More to come later, but the state Senate Education Committee approved this morning a revised version of Senate 236 Bill, the school construction bill.

The bill, which now goes to the Finance Committee, now only affects nine counties, including Wake County. An amendment from Sen. Josh Stein to drop Wake was rejected.

Stein and school board vice chairwoman Christine Kushner basically raised the points from the school district handout for why the county shouldn't take over schools. They argued the system now works and doesn't need to be changed.

Sen. Neal Hunt argued that commissioners have more business experience than school board members. Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, told the committee that the school board had become "a board of construction versus a board of education."

UPDATE

The state Senate is moving quickly today to adopt Senate Bill 236. The Senate Finance Committee added the bill to its agenda and approved the legislation.

It's been added to today's calendar for a vote by the full Senate..

It turns out that potential renovations to Fuquay-Varina High School don't cost $82 million after all.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, has complained at the last two joint meetings about the $82 million price tag for Fuquay-Varina High. He's questioned why the renovation would cost so much.

School staff now say that the figure is actually $63 million. Joe Desormeaux, assistant superintendent for facilities, told school board members last week that "we found an error in our program on the cost per square foot that did a significant change as you can see with Fuquay-Varina."

The Fuquay-Varina High renovation isn't on the short list of recommended projects for the fall bond issue. The bond list will be discussed at Thursday's joint meeting of the school board and commissioners.

Should North Carolina's public school systems lose the ability to sue county commissioners for more funding?

As noted in today's article, Senate Bill 674 would change state law so that school boards could no longer sue their county commissioners for more funding for the operating budget or over getting more money to purchase land.

Under state law, school boards who are involved in funding disputes can seek mediation. If that fails, school boards can file a lawsuit in Superior Court.

The Wake County school board and the Wake County commissioners may have agreed in principle to a school construction dollar amount, but they're still split on how to spend the money.

As noted in today's article, both boards agreed Thursday to target $900 million for the amount with the details to come later about what would be funded. As Thursday's discussion showed, the issue of how much to spend on renovations vs. new schools is a sticking point between the two boards.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, resumed Thursday the questions he had at the last meeting about why some renovations have such high dollar amounts.

One of the big questions today is how the Wake County school board — and especially the Wake County Board of Commissioners — will react to the proposed school bond scenarios.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, had said last week that the $609 million option was probably too low and the $2.3 billion was definitely too high. He said that the $854 million and $1.1 billion scenarios would be good places to begin the conversation for a fall bond amount.

But how will Bryan's fellow Republican commissioners react to the idea? Will the Democratic commissioners push for the $1.1 billion since it's the largest of the scenarios that they could probably get on the ballot?

Another thing to see at today's joint meeting is if school board members are more comfortable with going ahead with an Oct. 8 bond referendum as opposed to waiting until 2014. If they do back a fall bond, a final decision has to be made by the end of June.