The Wake County school board appointed Blaine Clark on Tuesday to be the new principal of Root Elementary School in Raleigh.

Clark, the assistant principal at Millbrook Elementary School since 2007, will receive a salary of $82,640. Clark starts at Root on Monday.

The Wake County school board appointed Elaine Hanzer as the interim principal of Root Elementary School in Raleigh this evening.

Hanzer, who has done various interim principal positions since her retirement, was the principal of Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School from 2004 to 2011. She will be at Root from March 1 to April 12.

Hanzer will take over for Drew Ware, who accepted a principal's position in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system.

The Wake County school system is losing one of its principals to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system.

In a press release today, Chapel Hill-Carrboro announced that Lewis "Drew" Ware has been named the new principal of Estes Hill Elementary School. Ware has been principal of Root Elementary School in Raleigh since 2009.

In the press release, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Superintendent Thomas Forcella noted that Root is a STEM school. Forcella said Ware's experience with STEM "will be a great benefit, for not only the school, but the entire district."

As is standard in principal contracts, Ware can't leave immediately. He'll start his new job in March.

Which Wake County magnet schools, if any, should be worrying about losing their magnet status?

During Tuesday's school board work session, Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore said the determination on demagnetization is a longer more drawn out process that they weren't going to discuss yet. She wanted the board to focus on the adoption of the magnet principles and which schools to include in the magnet grant.

But this color-coded chart showing how the existing magnets fare under the magnet principles could give an indication of which schools might be at higher risk. Green indicates strongly aligned with the magnet principles, yellow is moderately aligned and red and white both mean not aligned.

Former Wake County school board member Beverley Clark wasn't the only speaker firing bombs at Tuesday's school board meeting.

As noted in today's article, critics of the new choice-based student assignment plan and supporters of magnet schools made up much of the turnout for public comment. Several speakers urged the board to make major changes to the new assignment plan.

Speakers also defended the magnet school program, downplaying the data indicating they have larger achievement gaps than non-magnet schools. They also denied that magnets were schools within a school as terms such as "social justice" and "diversity" were often mentioned.

Some Wake County schools are seeing noticeable changes in their percentages of low-income students because of the student assignment changes adopted by the school board in February.

For instance, Davis Drive Elementary's percentage of students receiving federally subsidized lunches fell from 18.9 percent last year to 6.6 percenet this year. For Reedy Creek Elementary, it rose from 41.4 percent last year to 53.3 percent this year.

This came after the board moved what was projected to be 175 students from Davis Drive to to Reedy Creek, Combs and Smith elementary schools. The moves were supposed to to be proximity related so students would attend a closer school.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata is recommending two vastly differently approaches to deal with under-enrolled schools.

As noted in today's article, one approach had the school board voting Tuesday to set aside $896,000 to provide additional teachers to five small underutilized elementary schools. The article also noted how when it comes to underutilized multi-track year-round schools, Tata wants to pursue the option of letting them switch to a single track.

Let's start with the small elementary schools discussion.

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More details to come later but there's been a change in which five under-enrolled Wake County traditional-calendar elementary schools would get additional staffing for the 2011-12 school year.

Wake Superintendent Tony Tata said today that Baileywick Elementary School is on the list because its enrollment has been declining sharply. He said that York Elementary is no longer in the running because new data shows the school's enrollment is projected to increase.

The other schools getting additional teachers are still the same as previously mentioned. They are Aversboro, Hilburn Drive, Jeffreys Grove and Root elementary schools.

The school board will vote today on allocating the $896,000 for the extra positions at those schools. Tata said he wanted the vote now to have the info out before they hold the teacher transfer fair.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's budget proposal will dominate much of the discussion at Tuesday's school board meeting.

The agenda for the committee of the whole meeting that starts at 1 p.m. includes a board budget work session. Another COW topic is Tata's proposal to set aside $900,000 to provide additional staffing at "small elementary schools" such as Aversboro, Hilburn Drive, Jeffreys Grove, Root and York who are dealing with enrollment issues.

The public will have its say at 6:15 p.m. during the public hearing on the budget proposal.

There's some good news, bad news and some assumptions being made in the new 2011-12 budget proposed today by Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata.

Starting with the good news, Tata said his focus was to develop a budget that protects teachers and the classroom while setting conditions to make schools in high demand.

In terms of protecting teachers and the classrooms: