Taxpayers could be billed for as much as $60,000 to pay for the Wake County school system's efforts to influence lawmakers during the legislative session.

This contract shows that Capitol Advantage Associates, led by Theresa Kostrzewa, will be paid up to $35,000 to be the school board's lobbyist in the General Assembly. This contract shows that Crowder Consulting will be paid up to $25,000 to be the board's legislative liaison.

School board chairman Keith Sutton said Tuesday they had signed a contract with Crowder Consulting because they expected a flurry of legislative bills involving schools and didn't want to go the route of expending the funds to bring back the old staff position of legislative liaison.

Wake County school administrators say they're trying to address concerns of Brier Creek Elementary School parents who are worried about being forced to change year-round tracks or have children on different tracks.

Brier Creek's PTA has set up this online petition asking the school board to waive policy to reduce the minimum class sizes in fourth- and fifth-grades. The petition says that the school can't fund a 4th-grade teacher for the rising 3rd grade class on a given track, resulting in a track change or siblings on different tracks.

School administrators said last week that they're working on addressing the issue in the upcoming budget that will be presented March 5. They also say that the Brier Creek petition contains some errors.

It's not an understatement to say that Thursday's Wake County school board discussion on the student assignment policy was a free-wheeling discussion.

The variety of topics discussed, such as how explicit to make an achievement goal and what to say about socioeconomic diversity, set the stage for the long process to follow to come up with a revised policy.

Unlike most committee meetings, nearly every board member including new appointee Tom Benton attended. That's a sign of how important the discussion was viewed.

Wake County Commissioner Tony Gurley will have to wait awhile if he wants to see the minutes of the Jan. 22 closed-session meeting in which the school board agreed to purchase the former YWCA building in Raleigh.

Commissioners rejected a prior YWCA offer on Jan. 7, leading to the school board approving a revised deal on Jan. 22. Gurley said Monday he wants to review the minutes because he believes the school board was buying the property for “political reasons” and had “misused its rules seriously” during the closed session.

School board chairman Keith Sutton and school board attorney Jonathan Blumberg said the closed session was valid. But Blumberg said the minutes can’t be released yet because they’ve haven’t been approved by the board.

The Wake County school board is going to fight it out in the General Assembly against the county commissioners over proposed legislative changes.

As noted in today's article, members of the school board's Democratic majority objected to the legislative changes backed by the GOP majority on the county commissioners. The school board will fight letting commissioners take over ownership of schools, give money to help charter schools build facilities and their support for adding at-large school board seats.

Democratic board members said they were defending the school system by hiring a lobbyist to oppose the commissioners' 2013 state legislative agenda.

It looks like there's still going to be a priority for Wake County students from high-performing nodes to get into magnet schools, but there won't be a transfer priority for applicants from low-performing schools to get into high-performing ones.

Both issues became intertwined during last week's student assignment work session as board members and staff worked through the details of the draft 2013-14 student assignment plan. The final vote will come during Tuesday's meeting.

During last week's discussion, you had discussion about how far the board should go to keep students from leaving some schools and who should get priority for magnet access.

Should the Wake County school board consider putting time limits on how long individual board members can debate issues at meetings?

The school board's policy on rules of order has a section on board debate, including saying a person who hasn't spoken yet should be allowed to talk before a board member speaks again. It also talks about, to the extent possible, alternating between proponents and opponents of a measure.

During Tuesday's policy committee meeting, board member Susan Evans said she's fine with the present debate rules. But Evans also asked if they wanted to consider putting time limits on how much individual board members can speak when they have the floor.

There seems to be widespread agreement among Wake County school board members that enrollment caps, especially the new partial caps, are a good idea.

But as noted in today's article, board members were hesitant at Tuesday's policy committee meeting to sign off on proposed revisions to the capping policy. The main revision requested by staff was to insert new wording allowing the superintendent to implement partial caps to go along with existing wording permitting the board to set full caps.

“This is one of the items that I think all of us found pleasantly surprising in the proposal that we all sort of agreed to," said board member John Tedesco of the partial caps.

The Wake County school board took a step last week toward completing the last remaining action step required by AdvancED.

AdvancED had in its March 2011 report faulted the school board's then Republican majority for using resolutions to make decisions, bypassing the normal two-vote process for policies and often not providing the resolutions with advance notice.

The board voted last week to give initial approval to this new policy that would set the general scope of what board resolutions should be used for. It would also stipulate providing information on the resolutions ahead of time.

After a week of tearing into each other, Wake County school board members finally found something they could agree on Thursday night.

As noted in today's article, Republican and Democratic board members unanimously agreed to scrap the 2013-14 draft assignment maps in favor of going to the 2011-12 base maps. The fact they were agreeing drew several mentions and jokes at the board table.

The change occurred when board member Jim Martin interrupted the discussion of how the draft maps would affect the percentages of low-income students next year.

UPDATE

The 2011-12 base address lookup feature is still up. Click here to view.

If you don't remember what the pre-choice plan maps looked like in 2011-12, click here to refresh your memory. The link puts you on Wake's school directory page. Pick a school and then click on its assignment tab. Under the assignment tab you'll find a link to a PDF map for the 2011-12 base assignment area.

If you live near Rolesville High, Rolesville Middle, Richland Creek Elementary's permanent campus off US 1 in Wake Forest near the Franklin County line or Abbott Creek Elementary's permanent campus near the North Wake Landfill you can expect you might be added to their base areas.

Also, if you live in Panther Creek High's base look for change as you're reassigned to Green Hope High since they're not using a standalone ninth-grade center for PCHS.

The board agreed with the stay where you start rules proposed in the draft plan so you'd be able to grandfather if you're an existing student.