Here are some tidbits from today's news conference with Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata.

Tata said there were 5,115 magnet school applications as of 5 a.m. today, an amount comparable to the same time in the application process in February. He said that historically there's a last-minute spike, which could again occur before the close of this year's filing period at 10 p.m. Monday.

Tata urged parents to apply even though they might be discouraged about how the system lists so few magnet seats at some popular schools. As previously noted, the seat numbers reflect how Wake preassigned 1,892 rising magnet sixth- and ninth-graders for next school year because it's part of their feeder.

UPDATE

Click here to view the online story about the presentation at the Realtors meeting.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata and the school board are getting support from the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Wake Education Partnership to vote on the student assignment plan on Tuesday.

In an op-ed piece today, leaders of both groups say the plan will empower parents, produce stability, create a culture of competition, efficiently use facilities and create a natural diversity. While the plan isn't perfect, they say it's  "a logical blueprint for moving beyond the divisive issue of reassignment."

"Delaying a decision at this point would only prolong the corrosive debate and further distract from pressing classroom issues and needed discussions about how to handle future enrollment growth," according to the piece written by Jim Brown, chair of Wake Education Partnership's board of directors and Jim Beck, chair of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.

Should the Wake County school board hold off on adopting the new student assignment plan on Tuesday?

As noted in today's article, the recent election results could mean a new Democratic majority would take office Dec. 6 whose members have raised concerns about the details of the current plan. If Republicans still maintain control, four new members would take office in less than two months.

School board vice chairman John Tedesco said he, board chairman Ron Margiotta and Superintendent Tony Tata agreed Wednesday to leave the vote on the plan on the Oct. 18 agenda. Tedesco said they need to follow Tata's timetable to have it ready for implementation in the 2012-13 school year.

The discussion of the blue plan being used for Wake County school assignment also got detailed Monday.

Once again, start with this handout. Let's start with the clarifications.

One, everyone who is already in a school for 2011-12 gets to stay there in 2012-13 and through completion of that grade span if that's what they want, even if it's not on their "list" of choices. (Grandfathering is also provided in the green plan but some people were concerned about the blue plan more because you're more likely to see changes in choices.)

Wake County school board member John Tedesco is sure sounding like he prefers the blue plan over the green plan for student assignment.

During an interview today on the Bill LuMaye Show on WPTF, Tedesco said he's open to hearing what the public has to say about both models. But he was far more enthusiastic in describing the blue plan, comparing it to both the plans developed by Michael Alves and the one he had been working on.

"I think the voters who elected me wanted to empower parents, empower proximity for neighborhood schools, empower more choice and more options when we had options like mandatory year-round in the community," Tedesco said "They wanted to reduce inefficiencies and remove the administrators from making decisions that parents should be making and I think the blue plan does lead to that more."

It's time to pick your colors in the Wake County student assignment fight.

The blue plan/community-based choice plan would have you choose four to six elementary schools, with the choices largely based on proximity. The options would include an "achievement choice," a school that’s determined by Wake to be within the top third in the district academically based on factors such as how many high-performing teachers it has and the passing rate of students on state exams.

The achievement choice is the blue plan's efforts to avoid creating high pockets of low-performing schools.

UPDATE

Click here to view the plans.

There have been a couple of new developments today in the ongoing saga of Wake County student assignment and school diversity.

One, the school system made public today documents it turned over to the U.S. Education Department that says there is no evidence that any of their decisions about student assignment policies or procedures were "motivated by racial animus." I'll go more into the documents, part of the ongoing federal civil rights probe, in a later post.

Two, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and the N.C. Justice Center released a new report today that's critical of the Wake School Choice Plan. They say the plan, developed by Michael Alves, doesn't promote student achievement highly enough and lacks clear policies to ensure all schools are high-performing.

UPDATE

Click here to read Wake's response letter to OCR.

The mystery of how many kids were and are still being bused for socioeconomic diversity in Wake County won't be answered by the school district anytime soon.

As noted in today's article, school officials responding to the civil rights  probe by the U.S. Department of Education say they don't have the info. Click here to view the district's response.

The feds had asked how many students were bused for socioeconomic diversity in 2007-08 and 2008-09.

We could be getting closer to an official position from the Great Schools in Wake Coalition on the Wake School Choice Plan.

GSIW issued a media advisory yesterday on a March 15 community forum on the Wake School Choice Plan that it's sponsoring with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children.

The forum will run Tuesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Martin Street Baptist Church, 1001 East Martin Street in Raleigh.

What do Wake County school board meetings and the Cartoon Network have in common?

The New York Times thinks both have a lot in common according to this article that was posted online Sunday night and will appear in Monday's print edition. The Times article notes the more recent developments in the Wake school diversity controversy and how the Wake School Choice Plan could be the solution.

"The (school) board is split five Republicans to four Democrats, and for the last 15 months meetings have looked like a Cartoon Network special, featuring in the lead role Mr. (John) Tedesco, 36, the most verbal member of the majority," according to the article. "He is single with no children and has lots of time on his hands to stir things up."

UPDATE

No front page this time. The article appeared on pg. 11 in the A section of Monday's New York Times.