The big news out of tonight's Wake County school board work session is that they're scrapping the draft 2013-14 student maps developed by staff.

Both majority and minority board members agreed it made more sense to go back to using the 2011-12 base maps and starting from there. Democratic members talked about only making a few changes for next year while taking a comprehensive look for the 2014-15 school year.

So many people complained about reassignments in the draft map that it tipped the balance with no one objecting tonight to scrapping them.

The 2011-12 maps will have to revised to reflect the attendance lines for the two new schools that opened this year and the two that will open next year. But board attorney Jonathan Blumberg said they now don't have to change the student assignment policy before the plan is adopted.

This week marks what could be a potentially major week in the history of Wake County student assignment.

As noted in today's article, the school board's policy committee will meet Tuesday to begin discussion of rewriting the student assignment policy to reintroduce diversity as one of the components. On Saturday, the school board will go over the 2013-14 draft student assignment plan that could potentially be rewritten to reflect the diversity changes.

One of the questions the school board will face is how to word the diversity component in the assignment policy. Should it be a general statement, as proposed by staff, or a more explicit document that would have a variety of income and achievement targets?

Members of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition accused Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata of scapegoating Don Haydon for the bus problems and said he's the one who should be relieved of his duties.

During the public comment session at Tuesday's school board meeting in which speakers were repeatedly warned not to discuss specific personnel, several GSIW members lamented the senior staff who've left Wake since Tata became superintendent.

Lynn Edmonds complained about Wake's longtime staff being replaced by people with no experience working in school systems. who come from the "free market or the corporate world," or being graduates from the Broad Superintendents Academy.

The Wake County school board has put on hold the public hearings on the student assignment plan.

The decision was made tonight after a heated debate over whether to release the assignment maps and online address lookup of base assignments before the first hearing on Monday. Republican board members said the info should be released ahead of time while Democratic board members said doing so wouldn't help because comments would focus on individual assignments and not on the plan as a whole.

Democratic members said that they want to release the maps to parents to get input on that too, but not right now. The hearings will be rescheduled.

Board members from both sides did agree that a proposed Oct. 30 vote on the plan was too soon.

UPDATE

Board members said it would be rushing to hold the hearings next week when there's not enough detail on the plan.

In addition, don't look for the online address lookup feature to be up Friday.

One of the issues raised by Jonathan Blumberg, acting as board attorney tonight, is that the board needs to make the changes to the various policies before the new plan can be adopted.  The board would need to make changes in the student assignment policy and the transfer policy.

Depending on how quickly they want to act, the next policy commitee meeting is on Tuesday, Sept. 25.

The Wake County school board adopted its 2011 Legislative Agenda tonight after some unusual machinations.

After various motions, the board essentially adopted the draft agenda presented by staff. The big difference is that the board did decide to add a request that the General Assembly pass a law allowing the school board chair to vote on all issues.

The process for getting to the final outcome was convoluted.

The opening of today's AdvancED accreditation discussion turned into barb trading between Wake County school board members Ron Margiotta and Debra Goldman with each accusing the other of being "condescending."

Today's meeting, which is now in closed session, opened with a 5-2 vote to reject the agenda. Goldman voted with the Democrats.

Goldman's explanation was that as board vice chair she should have been consulted beforehand by Margiotta, the board chair, about what the closed session would be about. She objected to the agenda only saying going into closed session to protect attorney-client privilege.

It looks like AdvancED will be discussed by the Wake County school board on Monday.

School board chairman Ron Margiotta has just scheduled a special called board meeting at 4 p.m. Monday at Cary High School before that evening's public hearing on the student reassignment plan. The agenda calls for a closed session to protect "attorney-client privilege," the same reason used at last week's special meeting to discuss AdvancED.

The only reason the issue wasn't discussed by the board this week was because of scheduling conflicts with board attorney Jonathan Blumberg.

UPDATE

They've now confirmed that AdvancED will be discussed in closed session. There will be a public comment session at 8:30 a.m. on AdvancED before a potential board vote.

It looks like next week will be the earliest that the Wake County school board can decide what to do next with AdvancED over the accreditation fight.

Due to the absence of school board attorney Jonathan Blumberg from today's meeting, the board did not hold a discussion on AdvancED. But school board chairman Ron Margiotta said it will happen soon.

Toward the end of tonight's meeting, board member Kevin Hill pressed Margiotta for when the issue would be discussed. Margiotta said he's waiting to see if Blumberg will be available to meet with them during a board meeting.

Will the Wake County school board discuss the accreditation fight with AdvancED today?

Today's work session and action meeting agendas don't include the topic. But school board member Kevin Hill said he wants it discussed so that they can come to some final decision on the issue.

The board can choose to withdraw from AdvancED, which would end the review but also cost high schools their accreditation. Officials from AdvancED say they won't be the ones who pull the accreditation, at least before they conduct their review.

UPDATE

School board chairman Ron Margiotta says he doesn't expect the board to discuss AdvancED today because the main attorney handling the case, Jonathan Blumberg, won't be at the meeting.

Is it the Wake County school system or AdvancED that is being unreasonable and uncooperative in the accreditation review?

As noted in today's article, both sides insist they've been cooperative and that the other party has been unreasonable. There has been plenty of finger pointing over the process, which is putting at risk the accreditation of Wake's 24 high schools.

"All said, the history of communication reflects that the school system has been cooperative and that AdvancED has not," writes school board attorneys Ann Majestic and Jonathan Blumberg in Thursday's letter to AdvancED. "Collegiality is a two-way street, and the school system wants to restore constructive dialogue and good faith to this process."