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.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR LINKS TO HANDOUTS

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:

Would you be willing to give money to a Wake County Public School System Education Foundation as a way to help out during this budget crunch?

That was one of the ideas the school board's finance committee agreed to explore today as a source for alternative revenues. The committee wants school administrators to look at what it would take to create a non-profit education foundation for the school system.

Keith Sutton, chairman of the finance committee, said a foundation would allow people to give money to the school system that could be written off for tax purposes. For instance, he said people might want to give stocks and cash.

SEE END OF POST FOR HANDOUTS FROM THE COMMITTEE MEETING 

Only one new principal appointment tonight.

Camille Hedrick was named principal of Apex Middle School at a salary of $112,286. She replaces Timothy Lee Locklair, who was recently named principal of Holly Springs High.

Hedrick has been an assistant principal at Lufkin Road Middle School since 2006. She's also married to James Hedrick, principal of Green Hope High School.

Since I was out on July 21, I'll also post those principal changes too.

UPDATE: BIO SHEETS AT END OF POST

The high school moves may be wrapped up tonight.

Kevin Hill, vice chairman of the board, juggled his schedule to attend tonight to discuss the high school changes. He's not going to be here tomorrow due to a prior conflict.

If Hill couldn't attend tonight, the board might have held off until Thursday on the remaining high school review.

UPDATE

Due to the large crowd, the work session has been moved to the main board room. There's plenty of space left. 

The school board has agreed this morning to largely keep the Lacy Elementary moves intact in the plan.

The only change is to drop the reassignment of Node 106 from Lacy to Root Elementary. Depending on the numbers you use, there's either one kid or 23 kids in that node.

All the other Lacy nodes are going to Root. All three Lacy nodes are going to Stough.

It looks like, for now at least, the Stough parents have won the fight.

UPDATE

Corrected typo. 

It’s probably not a surprise, but the talk about Lacy Elementary School took up a good chunk of Thursday’s reassignment discussion.

Many of the questions focused on the accuracy of the growth projections for Lacy. There were also a lot of questions about how to assess comparability, a major factor in Wake’s reassignment policy.

Here’s the quick summary.