Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's weekly press briefing covered a variety of topics today, including the new student assignment plan, bus safety and school board chairman Ron Margiotta's request for board meeting videos that may have been used to attack Susan Evans.

Tata gave an update on implementation of the student assignment plan, saying letters were sent Wednesday to families explaining the plan had been adopted. He said a summit of his various advisory committees discussed Thursday how to do community outreach.

For those concerned about the plan, Tata stressed the oversight function that will be performed by staff and a community advisory board to monitor implementation.

It should come as no surprise that The Independent is endorsing Wake County school board member Kevin Hill in the runoff election, just as it did previously.

In this week's issue of the liberal weekly, the Indy writes that "voters in District 3 (North Raleigh) can finish the job of restoring responsible leadership to the Wake County Board of Education by re-electing Kevin Hill in the only school board runoff."

The Indy calls last week's election victories by Democrats "a stunning repudiation of Republican Party partisanship as applied to Wake's public schools after the 2009 elections." The weekly says Hill's election would create "a moderate 5-4 majority."

"Hill has pledged to work with Tata's plan and protect the diversity element, which Margiotta's majority was fixing to gut," the Indy writes. "By contrast, Hill's opponent in the runoff, Republican Heather Losurdo, is for the pure 'neighborhood schools' approach that Margiotta and the rest of the Republican slate advocated and which voters—turning out in historically huge numbers—rejected."

It looks like we should expect another flurry of mailers from Common Sense Matters targeting Wake County school board candidate Heather Losurdo in her runoff campaign.

A campaign finance report received Tuesday by the Wake County Board of Elections shows that the 527 group received $25,000 last Tuesday from the N.C. Futures Action Fund, the group led by Dean Debnam. This comes after the more than $52,000 that Common Sense Matters spent on mailers going after Losurdo and school board chairman Ron Margiotta before Oct. 11.

When you throw in the other Democratic-leaning 501 and 527 groups that were involved pre-Oct. 11, tens of thousands of dollars more could be spent in the next three weeks in mailers and television ads to defeat Losurdo.

Wake County Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Bryant is attributing last week's school board election results to "President Obama’s national organization" while also trying to rally people around Heather Losurdo's runoff efforts.

In the first post-election issue of the Elephant Express, Bryant writes today that "President Obama, Governor Perdue, and Reverend Barber won last week." She charges that the various Democratic-leaning groups that sent out mailers attacking Losurdo and school board chairman Ron Margiotta are linked to Obama.

"Make no mistake!" Bryant writes. "President Obama’s national organization was very much involved in the recent elections, with particular emphasis on Ron Margiotta’s and Heather Losurdo’s campaigns. They hired 'volunteers' and spent tens of thousands on mailers cleverly disguised as coming from non-related groups.

Was Tuesday's adoption of a new Wake County student assignment plan the culmination of years of study and discussion or a rushed decision?

As noted in today's article, school board members and administrators defended the vote as being necessary to avoid delaying implementation of the plan. But critics, particularly during the public comment section, urged the board to hold off adoption until the newly elected members have their say on the plan.

"The voters spoke," said Robert Hyman. "You lost the election. In effect, the chair of this board has been fired. You owe it to the new board to discuss it with them before you completely lose your moral authority and your legitimacy.”

By a 6-2 vote, the Wake County school board has approved tonight the new student assignment plan.

“While the plan isn’t perfect, it’s a major step in the right direction,” said school board chairman Ron Margiotta. “There will no longer be assignments based on socioeconomics and race. Parents’ cries for stability have been answered.”

Republican board members Debra Goldman, Chris Malone, Deborah Prickett and John Tedesco and Democrats Anne McLaurin, Carolyn Morrison voted for the plan. Democratic board members Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton voted no.  Sutton had unsuccessfully suggested delaying the vote by 30 days.

Hill cited the lack of seats specifically set aside at high-performing schools for students applying from low-performing areas for his vote.

“I can’t negotiate on the issue of student achievement,” Hill said.

UPDATE

Click here to view the student assignment resolution approved tonight.

Click here to read the remarks from Superintendent Tony Tata.

Click here to view the adopted feeder patterns.

How's this for a what-if scenario from the Wake County school board elections?

During an appearance Wednesday on The Bill LuMaye Show on WPTF, Democratic political strategist Perry Woods speculated on what might have happened if school board chairman Ron Margiotta had faced Jim Martin instead of Susan Evans in the District 8 race.

"They kind of got maybe a little too cute and moved him out of the district," said Woods, who worked for the Democratic school board candidates. "And I think Ron probably had a better chance of beating Jim Martin than he did Susan Evans, who ended up beating him."

Most of the 28 speakers at Thursday's public hearing wanted the Wake County school board to make changes and/or delay a vote on adoption of the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, several speakers referenced Tuesday's election results that brought in three new school board members and could result in a new Democratic majority taking office Dec. 6. Speakers asked for a delay until November or December.

"If the board is willing to wait one month until after we see what the results of the next election are, Mr. Hill’s seat, I believe that the board will begin to come together in a much more dignified way and that the decision that is made will reflect the will of the entire community and not just a narrow majority," said the Rev. Tom Rhodes.

Public Policy Polling is pitching how the defeat of Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta by linking him to the Tea Party is "a model Democratic candidates across the country should consider following in 2012."

In a memo released today, PPP writes that defeating Margiotta "required an incredibly strong message to win his seat - and that message proved to be the Tea Party." The memo says that "the Wake County Democratic Party and the candidates themselves relentlessly hammered home to voters the message about Margiotta’s Tea Party ties."

One of the authors of the memo is PPP CEO Dean Debnam. Amid all the talk about the success of the anti-Tea Party message, nothing is listed about how Debnam helped push that message through his work leading the N.C. Futures Action Fund.

Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta is blaming voter complacency for his election loss while also calling for people to rally around Heather Losurdo in her runoff contest.

In an interview Wednesday with conservative talk show host Bill LuMaye on WPTF, Margiotta said they just weren't able to turn out their voters on Tuesday. He pointed to the efforts by the Wake County Democratic Party to spend $85,000 on get-out-to-vote efforts for the school board races and the money spent by the outside groups such as Common Sense Matters to attack him.

"Our voters were extremely complacent," Margiotta said. "They felt they didn't have to come out because Margiotta was going to win and I think that's what it tended to boil down to. Our voters didn't come out feeling that they were pretty much satisfied with what was going on. "