The Wake County school board announced principals Tuesday for five schools.

Robert James was promoted from assistant principal to principal of East Wake School of Arts, Education and Global Studies in Wendell. James, who has been at East Wake since 2010, will now receive a salary of $70,812.

Eric Fitts was promoted from assistant principal to principal of Brentwood Elementary School in northeast Raleigh, Fitts, who has been at Brentwood since 2011, will now receive a salary of $80,814.

The Wake County school board appointed interim principals tonight for River Bend Elementary School and Longview School.

Darryl Fisher will serve as interim principal of River Bend, located in northeast Raleigh, from Feb. 1 to April 1. Fisher was the principal of Wilburn Elementary for 21 years.

Ramey Beavers' stay as the intern principal at Longview, an alternative school in East Raleigh, was extended through May 1. Beavers, the former head of student assignment, has been filling in at Longview since October.

More details to come later but there's now a proposal on the table to collapse 14 multi-track Wake County year-round schools to a single track.

Superintendent Tony Tata proposed today giving flexibility to principals at under-enrolled year-round schools the flexibility to go to a single track for the 2011-12 school year. He said the principals would pick the track.

The schools identified by Tata are those that are at under 100 percent of what would be their single-track capacity: Alston Ridge, Ballentine, Banks Road, East Garner, Harris Creek, Highcroft, Lake Myra, Rand Road, River Bend, Timber Drive, Wakefield and West Lake elementary schools; and East Cary and Holly Grove middle schools.

UPDATE

Tata says he'll come back in May with a specific list of schools to recommend. While he didn't specify a number, it will likely not be all of the 14 year-round schools that are below 100 percent of single-track capacity.

Are you ready for another battle over converting some Wake County year-round schools to a traditional calendar?

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata said he's looking at whether to recommend converting some year-round schools to a traditional calendar as part of his 2011-12 budget. It stemmed from his review on how to efficiently utilize space throughout the district.

"We can’t have 140 percent enrollment in one school and 50 percent in another school," Tata said about why he was looking at spending $900,000 to help provide teachers at 19 underenrolled traditional-calendar elementary schools. "So this an effort to make all of our schools desirable."

One of the variables for next school year is whether there will be a big increase in the number of year-round and traditional-calendar applicants in Wake County.

As noted in today's article, staff plans to approve all calendar applications filed next month except in those rare cases when a special education requirement would be an issue. While the percentage of approvals will go up, Asst. Supt. Chuck Dulaney said they're not expecting much of an increase in total applicants.

In the case of traditional-calendar applicants, the reason why they might not increase much could be a source of anger for some parents.

Tuesday's discussion about Fox Road Elementary highlights the challenges and limits that the current assignment policy faces in Wake.

For those who don't want to read the whole post, I'll run off some of the main points from Tuesday's facilities committee meeting. Staff is reviewing the draw areas for magnet and year-round schools, which could affect where current and future application students will go.

For diversity reasons, some magnet schools were deliberately left with empty seats this school year. For diversity reasons, an effort to encourage more low-income students to apply for year-round schools may have backfired, at least at Fox Road Elementary.

It looks like the school board has agreed to make at least one more change to the reassignment plan.

During today's work session, Kevin Hill, the board vice chairman, asked that they not move nodes 233.4 and 233.5 from Fox Road Elementary to Wakefield Elementary.

None of the board members objected. But rather than voting during the work session, Rosa Gill, the board chairwoman, said they might as well do it this afternoon during the vote on the full plan.