Changes are looming for how students will be selected to fill Wake County's magnet schools.

Asst. Supt. Chuck Dulaney told board members on Tuesday that his staff will be working on a formal board policy on magnet schools. This would help formalize the year-to-year guidelines that his staff develops.

One of the goals of the new board policy would be to try to address how some non-magnet schools are being negatively impacted by magnet schools. In other words, you could see changes that make it harder for some students to get into the magnet program.

UPDATE: LINKS AT END OF POST NOW WORKING 

Let's play a game designed to help you get into the International Baccalaureate Program mindset.

Loren Baron, the new IB coordinator at Millbrook High School, asked teachers at Tuesday's training session to imagine that they had to leave the U.S. and relocate to another country. He then handed out a sheet with random statistics from various countries using the United Nations Human Development Report.

Click here to view the sheet, which listed stats such as urban population, public expenditure on education, prison population and adult literacy rate. The 16 countries listed only had letter identifiers with no names attached.

Wake's three newest magnet schools could be in line for millions in federal dollars.

The school board will vote Tuesday to request a federal magnet grant that would cover Brentwood Elementary, Smith Elementary and Millbrook High. Wake will implement the magnets regardless of the grant, but David Ansbacher, senior director for magnet programs, said the programs would be “more robust” with the federal funding.

Brentwood and Smith will enroll their first magnet students in August. Millbrook will be in a planning year for 2009-10 before taking magnet students.

The Sanderson baseball playoff game scheduled for Tuesday at Millbrook has been postponed due to wet grounds.  It is rescheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, May 27, at 7:00 PM.

The tune from Wake is a lot more upbeat about the latest report coming from Queens University of Charlotte.

As noted in today's article, the report found that Wake's high school graduates outperformed those from Durham, Charlotte, Forysth and Guilford when it comes to academic performance in the UNC system. The Wake students also had the higher UNC graduation rate of the group.

For at least some people in Wake, the report lends new validity to their belief that the district's diversity policy is superior to the neighborhood school approach used in Charlotte.

UPDATE

Click here for the Charlotte Observer article on the study.

It looks like Wake is changing the way it handles JROTC programs.

As noted in today's North Raleigh News article, Millbrook High plans to start an Army JROTC program in spring 2010 and Garner High has expressed interest in getting one. Other high schools may have to go through extra hurdles in the future.

During an update on JROTC in the district last month, administrators told school board members they'll begin looking at getting programs on a system level than on a school by school basis.

The school board has backed staff's suggestion for dealing with northern Wake high school reassignment.

The board would move nodes 243.1 and 243.5 (both by the US 1/401 split) from Millbrook High to Wake Forest-Rolesville High instead of to Wakefield High. These nodes would help raise Wake Forest's percentage of LI kids to make it more comparable with other area high schools.

In addition, the board would delay the Millbrook to H6 and Millbrook to Knightdale moves to 2011 instead of 2010. Asst. Supt. Chuck Dulaney said those moves could be delayed again if magnet enrollment doesn't rise as fast as hoped.

The changes would leave Millbrook at around 2,000 students.

All these nodes will be able to speak at a public hearing Tuesday. 

Node 337.3 is apparently out of luck for staying at Leesville Road High School.

School board member Patti Head asked about not moving the node to Millbrook High School. The problem was that it was caught up in the whole we're taking too many kids out of Millbrook High already argument.

The thought of losing another 76 kids slated to go to Millbrook didn't fly with the board. Sensing no support, Head didn't ask for a vote.

Head instead asked about redrawing the boundary lines for the node, as suggested by some parents, to allow some of those kids to stay at Leesville. Staff will review the idea and report back to the board.

We'll have to wait until later in the week for the school board to definitively deal with Millbrook High and the rest of the northeastern Wake high schools.

School board members agreed that the reassignment plan would move too many students would be moved out of Millbrook. The problem is they're not sure what's the right balance to leave Millbrook at without leaving other nearby schools too underenrolled.

Millbrook parents argue that it's unrealistic to move so many students out and expect they'll be replenished so quickly with magnet students.

Magnetizing Millbrook High School isn't turning out to be all it's cracked up to be.

As noted in today's article, a large contingent of Millbrook High parents, teachers and students packed Monday's public hearing to complain about the reassignment plan.

While the Millbrook speakers said they still want the new International Baccalaureate magnet program, they're not thrilled with the proposed reassignment changes.