Should the Wake County school system guarantee bus service to all students who choose to stay on their current feeder pattern?

It's an issue in the new student assignment that the school board has been wrestling with for the past several months. The discussion got personal at times last week with board member Jim Martin, the most outspoken proponent of providing the bus service, taking shots from board members Debra Goldman and Deborah Prickett.

For now, staff is continuing to review what bus service can be provided.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County school officials are touting the grandfathering component in the new student assignment plan but it has some caveats.

The plan does provide grandfathering with transportation if you want to stay at your current school until you complete that grade span. The plan goes on to say that you can be grandfathered to stay in the remaining schools in that feeder pattern if you don't want what's on your list of choices.

The potential problem is you may not get transportation to go along with the grandfathering for that feeder pattern.

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

Here's a very abbreviated recap of tonight's public hearing at Cary High School, which drew 75 speakers.

Among the biggest contingents were those calling for Salem elementary and middle schools and Highcroft Drive Elementary to be converted back to a traditional calendar. You also had a smaller group from Highcroft urging that the school stay on the year-round calendar.

You also had a lot of people supporting reassigning Carpenter Village to Davis Drive Middle and Green Hope High. There were also several speakers who asked that Breckenridge be allowed to stay at Cedar Fork Elementary.

Schools in Wake County and across the country will be celebrating American Education Week starting on Monday.

American Education Week is an effort from the National Education Association to promote recognition of teachers and public schools. The week is marked by daily activities such as encouraging parents to visit schools, honoring support staff and substitute teachers and encouraging community leaders to serve as educators for a day.

Wake NCAE has encouraged individual schools to hold events.

While voters were at the polls today, the school board was meeting.

The board has traditionally avoided doing things on Election Day that are controversial. Today's agenda looked pretty tame.

One of the things the board did today was appoint principals to Salem and Creech Road elementary schools.

It's not your imagination if your kid's year-round class size looks larger than normal.

As noted in today's article, some year-round schools have classes of more than 30 students while others are in the high 20s. The state's budget shortfall is being blamed for much of the problem for the larger class sizes.

"We don't have a lot of flexibility with staffing as we have had in the past," said Shelly Watson, principal of Green Elementary School in North Raleigh.

Andy Hoang and Erik Salgado, the fifth-graders who recently won the 2009 National Scrabble Championship , are going national.

The two are scheduled to appear on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on Tuesday.

The 11-year-olds -- who attend Salem Elementary in Apex, but live in Cary -- won the title last weekend, earning medals and $10,000. They were undefeated during the two-day contest. Read more about their adventure in Matt Ehler's story here.

"Jimmy Kimmel Live" airs at 12:05 a.m. weeknights on ABC.

Those pesky AC problems are cropping up at Salem Elementary again.

School was dismissed early at 12:45 p.m. due to the AC acting up. Wake had been working on Salem's AC unit in June as well.

With temps possibly hitting 100 during the next week, AC units will be working overtime.

UPDATE

School will reopen Thursday on a normal schedule.