The fallout over Wake County school board member John Tedesco's speech at the April 15 Tea Party rally isn't going away.

This time, the conservative Civitas Institute is complaining about the criticism that liberal activist Chase Foster heaped on Tedesco at last week's school board meeting.

In a blog post today, Bob Luebke asks whether Foster "has also lectured Kevin Hill, Keith Sutton, Ann McLaurin and Carolyn Morrison for their work with the Democratic Party of Wake County?"

Here's a quick recap of today's budget discussion at the joint meeting of the Wake County school board and county commissioners.

David Neter, the school district's chief business officer, gave an overview of the budget that was adopted Tuesday by the school board. the budget includes a $313.5 million funding request to commissioners - the same amount as last year.

During today’s meeting, school board finance committee chairman Keith Sutton asked commissioners to increase funding to the school system.

The Wake County school board majority is getting political heat now from more than just the minority members on the board.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith and Sarah Ovaska, the Raleigh City Council has joined the Democratic members of the Wake County board of commissioners to oppose the school board majority's plans to end the diversity policy. Both have now passed resolutions expressing concerns with the majority's plans.

“We need to do anything in our power to stop the school board,” Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said to the City Council on Tuesday.

UPDATE

School board chairman Ron Margiotta opened today's joint meeting by saying that he recognizes that the commissioners' resolution can be in conflict with the school board's new assignment plans. He said they'll meet to discuss it later but need to focus today on the agenda topics.

Was it fair to move some 100 Garner High School students to Southeast Raleigh High this fall without prior notice or a public hearing?

As noted in today's article, the way the Garner High students were moved for this fall still leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths. Unlike past practice, the moves were made without a public hearing for those families. It was also done on very short notice.

The moves were first publicly proposed by school board member John Tedesco on March 23 at a student assignment committee meeting. They were approved by the full board on April 6.

If you're one of the people who've wondered if a four-day work week would be the way to deal with school budget cuts in Wake County, it's not considered a viable option yet.

Chief Business Officer David Neter laid out eight different options Wednesday they said had been suggested by people, including school board members, for coping with $20 million in state cuts. Those eight options were all rejected for various reasons.

Neter said it would take a change in state law to allow Wake to move to a four-day work week. State law requires schools to have both 180 days and 1,000 hours of instruction.

Borrowing a phrase from Dirty Harry, is the Wake County school system feeling lucky now?

As noted in today's article, school leaders aren't thrilled that they're facing $20 million in state cuts for the coming fiscal year. But they're at least relieved that, for now, they're not looking at teacher layoffs.

"The cuts are pretty severe but I'm glad that Wake County still has some flexibility," said Keith Sutton, chairman of the school board's finance committee.

The Wake County school board may include language calling for voluntary diversity in the revised student assignment policy.

As noted in today's online article by Thomas Goldsmith, board members at today's policy committee meeting talked about having some diversity language in the new policy 6200. It looks like the language would be similar to what's in the voluntary desegregation resolution that was passed last week to apply for a federal magnet schools grant.

One of the continuing points of contention is that the new Policy 6200 didn't have any references to diversity.

Here's the voluntary desegregation resolution that drew so much heat at Tuesday's Wake County school board meeting.

As noted in today's article, the board split 5-4 on the resolution's passage. The resolution is needed for Wake to apply for the next round of federal magnet school assistance program grants.

The resolution's supporters say that it shows Wake is still committed to diversity even though it's going to community-based schools. Opponents of the resolution say the call for diversity is hollow and only meant to secure the grant.

The Lacy-Stough and Garner-Southeast Raleigh moves were approved Tuesday, but not without some melodrama.

As noted in today's article, the board majority voted 5-4 to reverse the 2009 reassignment of three nodes from Lacy Elementary School to Stough Elementary. But the vote came after Deborah Prickett objected to media coverage about how the Lacy families had given political donations to help the new board majority last fall.

Prickett called it "political" that the N&O had run a story that mentioned the contributions on the day of the board vote. She said the article gave the impression that "affluent parents aren’t supposed to have a choice."

Members of the new Wake County school board majority put their stamp today on the state legislative lobbying agenda.

The board amended the agenda, which includes the items that Wake wants the General Assembly to approve, to say that the district opposes giving taxing authority to local school boards. Previous school boards have lobbied to get taxing authority from the state.

New school board member John Tedesco said he likes having the checks of balances of relying on the county, state and federal governments for funding.