Will the disparity between what rich and poor schools get in private dollars increase under the new choice-based student assignment plan being developed for Wake County?

As noted in Sunday's article by Thomas Goldsmith and David Raynor, Wake County schools receive more than $21 million each year in private revenue. Schools like Lacy Elementary raise around $100,000 a year from a non-profit foundation while Creech Road Elementary got $12,738 last year in various private donations.

"It is an equity issue that is hard to address because it's private money," said school board member Keith Sutton.

The Wake County school board appointed five principals tonight while moving four principals to assistant principal posts.

Gregory Butler was named principal of North Garner Middle School with a salary of $92,707.68. He has been an assistant principal at Southeast Raleigh High since 2009.

Carmen Graf was named principal of Banks Road Elementary School in Fuquay-Varina with a salary of $73,803.68. Graf has been an assistant principal at Timber Drive Elementary since October.

UPDATE

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The meeting is still going on so I'll keep it short for now on tonight's 2011-12 Wake County student reassignment plan votes.

The board wound up voting individually on all 50 items in the plan after GOP vice chairwoman Debra Goldman backed the Democrats on not doing one vote. The board approved 47 of the 50 items, dropping 220 students from the plan to reduce it to around 3,500 students.

The board dropped plans to send 164 students to Carnage Middle. The board also dropped moving 56 kids from Lacy Elementary to Conn Elementary.

Goldman later joined the Democrats in killing Deborah Prickett's motion to direct staff to start a magnet program at York Elementary.

How about playing a game of where's Tata instead of where's Waldo?

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta is not releasing new Superintendent Anthony Tata's full schedule even though media outlets requested it under the public records law. Only bits and pieces are being provided.

What's not being provided is the names of the elected officials who Margiotta says will be meeting with Tata.

We could finally get an up-to-date number on how many Wake County students were assigned for socioeconomic diversity under the school district's old student assignment policy.

As noted in today's article, stats on the number of kids bused for diversity are one of the many things that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights requested in this Dec. 7 letter to Wake school officials. Wake is crunching the numbers and will turn the info over next week.

OCR wants to know "for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years, the number of students by race/national origin and socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by a student's qualifying for free and/or reduced price lunch (FRPL), who were assigned to schools for SES-diversity purposes."

You've got two weeks to press you case to Growth Management to suggest changes to the 2011-12 student assignment plan before it's presented to the Wake County school board.

Laura Evans, senior director for growth management, told board members on Tuesday that she wants input on changes by the Thanksgiving break to be able to incorporate them into the plan that will be presented Dec. 7.

Most of the suggestions will likely come from the community workshops being held next week. But Evans said people can also send e-mail to studentassignment@wcpss.net to suggest changes.

The forum Thursday at Lacy Elementary School's PTA meeting produced more than a few highlights.

You had, as previously noted, school board members Ron Margiotta and Deborah Prickett objecting to the use of student achievement in the Alves plan. You had a somewhat modified version of the presentation on the Alves plan from what was given last week to the Garner Chamber of Commerce.

You had Dana Cope questioning Tim Simmons about the Alves plan and objecting to board member Carolyn Morrison's vote this year against returning the Lacy nodes from Stough Elementary.

Tonight's PTA meeting at Lacy Elementary School could get very heated over the issue of student assignment.

Lacy's PTA has invited school board member Carolyn Morrison, her student assignment committee representative Anne Sherron and Wake Education Partnership Vice President Tim Simmons to speak at a forum on student assignment.

The word is that Simmons will be grilled on the controlled-choice plan being developed by Michael Alves and that Morrison will face questions for voting earlier this year against reassigning the Stough Elementary nodes back to Lacy.

Will the reassignment of the Garner High and Stough Elementary students be the Achilles heel for the Wake County school board majority's move to community-based schools?

As noted in today's article, the federal civil rights complaint filed by the NAACP focuses on the Garner and Stough moves to accuse the school board majority of engaging in racial discrimination. The contention is that these moves were racially based as part of an act of "intentional discrimination."

"The Board was implementing the will of a well-organized and vocal set of parents who want to live in racially-isolated neighborhoods and send their children to racially-isolated schools," according to the complaint.

The state NAACP announced today that it had filed a federal Title VI complaint accusing the Wake County school system of racial discrimination over student assignment and disciplinary issues.

The civil rights complaint, filed late Friday afternoon, is based on three arguments. The first argument is that reassignments made this year by the new school board majority were intentionally discriminatory based on race.

The complaint is citing the reassignment of black students from Garner High to Southeast Raleigh High and of white students from Stough Elementary to Lacy Elementary. Mark Dorosin of the UNC Center for Civil Rights says those moves were made with "discriminatory intent."