Things definitely got heated at Wednesday night's forum looking into allegations of racial discrimination by the Wake County school system.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, speakers used terms like "white supremacy" and going "back to the back of the bus" to describe the move toward neighborhood schools in Wake.

“They are being introduced to blatant white supremacy in the Wake County school system,” said parent Darryl Fulton about what his four children are facing with the end of the diversity policy.

Is it the responsibility of Wake County school board members to ask for how much money they think they need or how much they think they can get?

As noted in today's article, that represented the split among Republican and Democratic board members when voting on the school budget proposal on Tuesday. Democrats on the board argued they need to ask for at least the same amount in local per-pupil funding as last year, even if it means asking for more money from the county commissioners.

"While I think the superintendent's budget is a very good one that has some very innovative ideas that protects classrooms and is overall a very good budget, I do think that we have a responsibility as a board to seek more funding, particularly given that we're in the third year of flat funding," said Democratic board member Keith Sutton.

It looks like the PTA won't officially have to be consulted when members are nominated to serve on Wake County school board advisory councils.

At the recommendation of school board member Deborah Prickett, the board agreed during today's work session to strike the language from the BAC policy saying that board members must consult with the principal and PTA before nominating members.

Prickett had initially wanted to remove the language about consulting with the principal too but agreed to only drop the section on PTA consultation.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Click here to view what was approved on first reading.

An overhaul of Wake County student discipline policies that largely eliminates zero-tolerance punishments could be adopted as soon as this week.

As noted in today's article, the Wake school board will vote Tuesday on a series of changes to the discipline policy with the biggest change being how suspensions would now be issued. School leaders expect the changes will reduce how often and how long students are suspended from school.

The changes appear to enjoy broad board support. Even critics of Wake's current discipline policies acknowledge it's a major change.

The Wake County school board may rejoin the N.C. School Boards Association after apparently realizing that going it alone wasn't the right call.

During Tuesday's budget work session, some of the members who had previously voted last year to pull out said they'd be willing to reconsider the issue. It came after Superintendent Tony Tata identified "three good reasons" for rejoining the NCSBA.

Tata cited how it would give Wake a person to lobby the General Assembly. Wake had a full-time lobbyist but lost the person after reducing it to a half-time position last year to save money. It's remained unfilled.

Cash Michaels is raising the possibility of property values being hurt by the Wake County school board majority's decision to end the diversity policy.

In a blog post Thursday on the sixth part of his series in The Carolinian on the new Walnut Creek Elementary School, Michaels looks at the Quarry Point subdivision near the school.

"With an average selling price of $144,410 per single-family unit, the clean, attractive, relatively new middle-class housing development where, according to city-data.com, the median income is $46,185; 69 percent of the homeowners are married couples that are both working; and over 25 percent of families there have children, 3 years-old and above, who are enrolled school K-12, the last thing this young community needs is anything that would drive down its collective property values," Michaels writes.

How much of a priority should the Wake County school board place in not putting incumbents in the same district during this year's redistricting process?

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, the guidelines adopted by the board recommend, but do not mandate, that districts shouldn’t pit incumbents against each other. But school board Chairman Ron Margiotta said he thinks representing voters should come before protecting any individual officeholder.

The redistricting process could be made much sticker based on some new information that Margiotta says they received on the issue.

Tomorrow's meeting of the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force has been canceled.

School board member John Tedesco, the chair of the committee, cited how board members Keith Sutton and Deborah Prickett won't be able to attend Thursday. Tedesco also pointed to how the meeting conflicts with a board due process hearing he'll be at tomorrow.

Despite the cancelation, Tedesco said the task force's four subcommittees are still expected to meet this month and report on their work in May.

The ED task force is the only board committee left following Tuesday's decision to disband the standing committees.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata is recommending two vastly differently approaches to deal with under-enrolled schools.

As noted in today's article, one approach had the school board voting Tuesday to set aside $896,000 to provide additional teachers to five small underutilized elementary schools. The article also noted how when it comes to underutilized multi-track year-round schools, Tata wants to pursue the option of letting them switch to a single track.

Let's start with the small elementary schools discussion.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR LINKS TO HANDOUTS

Gov. Bev Perdue and several other Democratic Party leaders are scheduled to attend a Thursday fundraiser in Raleigh for a group that's hoping to wrest control of the Wake County school board away from the Republican majority.

The stated goal of the fundraiser for the Wake Citizens for Good Government PAC is to benefit Wake school board candidates "who support high quality public schools for all children." The PAC was formed in 2009 and unsuccessfully ran a television attack ad against Republican-backed school board candidates.

The PAC was formed by Dean Debnam, president of the Democratic-leaning polling firm of Public Policy Polling. PPP has recently conducted surveys on Wake school issues for what the firm says is a private client.