The decision to allow all students in Wake County middle schools and high schools be eligible to participate in interscholastic sports led to some heated rhetoric from the school board.

Under this revised policy adopted two weeks ago, a student at a middle school or high school that doesn't have an interscholastic sports program will now be able to try out at another school designated by the district. The change affects two magnet middle schools, the early colleges, the alternative schools, Hilburn Drive Academy and the two new single-sex leadership academies.

The debate got so heated that school board member Deborah Prickett accused board member Jim Martin of opposing the policy because he personally disliked her, which he denied.  The rhetoric caused board member Christine Kushner and board chairman Kevin Hill to urge their colleagues to show more decorum.

Classes are reopening Tuesday for the five Wake County schools who were closed today because of this weekend's storm.

School officials are warning that some bus service might still be disrupted. Click here for more information.

The schools will make up today on April 30, a Saturday. That's pretty common for the multi-track year-round schools but no sot much for modified-calendar schools like Moore Square Middle.

School board members Chris Malone and John Tedesco are trying put the blame on vice chairwoman Debra Goldman and the Democrats for the consequences of killing the zone plan.

As noted in today's article, Malone and Tedesco say the Southeast Raleigh moves proposed Tuesday are only logical given the Oct. 5 vote killing the zone plan. What's left they say now is implementing moves for next year based on proximity from the new assignment policy.

"We're going to turn the system into a true neighborhood system," Malone said. "By taking away the zones, they took away a lot of flexibility."

The one figure that people kept repeating out of Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was 35 percent.

As noted in today's article, 35 percent is this year's gain in Algebra I enrollment under the new EVAAS placement guidelines compared to last year's total. There was a 26 percent increase in pre-Algebra enrollment. Overall, the gain for both courses was 30 percent.

"I know this is new for a lot of principals, but I want to really thank all of you for taking on the challenges," said school board member John Tedesco, chairman of the task force at Thursday's meeting. "Because of that we saw measurable gains. You can’t dispute that. A 35 percent increase is impressive."

UPDATE

SEE END OF POST FOR THURSDAY'S POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON MATH PLACEMENT UPDATE

Enloe High School isn’t the only one whose bell schedule got tweaked today.

While Enloe's schedule was changed again to add 10 more minutes each day for the upcoming school year, six other schools needed changes as well.

Chief Academic Officer Donna Hargens said the districtwide bell schedule list the school board approved on March 31 had some errors and left out at least one school.

There's been some questions about what the school board discussed Tuesday about changes to the magnet selection criteria.

Click here for the handout that lists the questions the board was asked to answer by staff. Even though they delayed acting on options two and three, it wasn't without some heated argument.

School board member Lori Millberg was the most vocal about changing the process to make sure magnet schools are recruiting from "the right schools."

Have you filed your magnet, year-round or traditional-calendar application yet?

While school officials say it doesn't matter when you file as long as you do so during the application period, some folks probably filled as soon as it hit midnight this morning. You've got until Feb. 28 to apply.

Wake is holding a media event this morning at Moore Square Middle School to mark the start of the magnet application period.

UPDATE

Click here to apply.

How your children's teachers rate their schools could surprise you.

As noted in today's article, some schools got scalding evaluations on the N.C. Teacher Working Conditions Survey. How comfortable would you be if you knew that a majority of the teachers at your child's school didn't think it was a good place to teach and learn?

Can you guess which Wake school had the highest percentage of teachers who say they plan to continue teaching there in the next two years?