It looks like the Wake County school system may soon hire an outside firm to conduct a review of the district's Academically and Intellectually Gifted (AIG) program.

During last week's school board student achievement committee meeting, staff reviewed different options for how to conduct the review that would help influence revisions that may be made to the AIG program. Click here on this handout.

One option would be to have the state Department of Public Instruction perform the review, possibly during the spring.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County school board member Jim Martin is proposing inserting a transfer selection priority to help families who feel their situation is "hopeless" at low-performing school.

During Tuesday's school board work session, staff was reviewing the selection priorities for the first transfer application period (page numbers 7-8 on this document). This would be the new period from Feb. 18 to March 1 when families could request a transfer to any school in the district that has space. Tansportation wouldn't be guaranteed.

Martin said he wanted to bring up the issue of helping students from low-performing nodes get into high-performing schools. He said the issue was raised by several of his constituents.

Does it make sense for the Wake County school system to hold a public hearing in a part of the district where students aren't being reassigned?

Wake County school staff had proposed holding a few public hearings on the new reassignment plan in northeastern Wake, where the bulk of the moves would occur.

But at last week's work session, school board members told staff to schedule at least one hearing outside that part of the county for families who might have other questions about the plan, such as how the base declaration period will work.

Should the Wake County school system go back to holding early release days or Wednesdays or continue to hold them on Fridays?

It's an argument that's been batted around the last few years with many families preferring to hold the six annual early release days on Fridays while many teachers would rather they be held on Wednesdays. For the last few years, the Republican board majority had opted for using Fridays.

But with a new Democratic board majority, it could be on Wednesdays for the 2013-14 school year. Some of those board members voiced support during Thursday's student achievement committee meeting for using Wednesdays.

We'll find out today how the Wake County school system says it's doing addressing the concerns raised by AdvancED.

Today is the deadline for Wake to give an update from when AdvancED upgraded the status of the district's high schools to accreditation warned in January. School leaders are hoping that they can regain full accreditation for the high schools.

What you won't see today is Wake's response to the complaint that the Wake County Taxpayers Association lodged about the Democratic school board majority and the firing of Superintendent Tony Tata. Wake has until Nov. 15 to respond to those issues.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION

Wake says it has until Dec. 18 now to respond to the WCTA allegations.

As of 7 p.m. (Thursday), the report isn't in yet (to the media). Wake says the report was sent to AdvancED at 4:52 p.m. Thursday to meet the deadline

The Wake County school board voted tonight to extend Stephen Gainey's contract as temporary superintendent through Dec. 31.

Gainey was originally named temporary superintendent for up to 60 days when the Democratic board majority voted Sept. 25 to fire Superintendent Tony Tata, paying him $253,625 in severance.

Gainey, the assistant superintendent of human resources, is already being paid $120,000 a year. He'll continue to be paid an additional $3,000 a month in salary and $750 a month in travel expenses to be temporary superintendent.

School board chairman Kevin Hill has said he wants to hold off on starting the superintendent search to see if any of the three board members running for state office wins next week. He wants their successors, who'd be appointed by the board, to be involved in the search.

Amid the less than good news that's marked school transportation for much of the school year, Wake County school administrators are touting they've saved $900,000 in fuel costs.

In a press release today, Wake points to the decision over the summer to buy 1.6 million gallons of diesel fuel — roughly a six-month supply — at $2.82 per gallon. Wake had originally budgeted to use three million gallons for the 2012-13 fiscal year at $3.30 per gallon, a cost of $9.9 million.

In contrast, most school districts use the state contract fuel price, which is now at $3.40 per gallon. Wake is saying that buying at the $2.82 per gallon price could result in more than $900,000 in savings for the district.

You can take a glass is half empty or half full view of Wake County student assignment in the short term.

As noted in today's article, the good news for families in the immediate future is that the 2013-14 plan is expected to have relatively few reassignments. But it's very much a transitional plan with a new plan to be developed for the 2014-15 school year that's likely to include a lot more reassignments for things such as promoting balance in student achievement and socioeconomic diversity.

"We were looking at trying to give the staff and the parents a respite so we could have the larger discussion that it seems like we’re trying to have right now, that we could have the larger discussion to put together a sustainable assignment plan," said board chairman Kevin Hill.

One issue that the Wake County school board will have to decide for the 2013-14 student assignment plan is what to do with the feeder patterns that were part of the choice plan.

Staff recommended, as part of the now discarded draft base maps, honoring the choice plan feeders for middle school and high school. The board's agreement last week to work with the 11-12 base maps means reconciling cases where the feeders are different from the choice plan.

The Democratic board members have been openly skeptical of the choice plan's premise that parents could be guaranteed a K-12 feeder pattern. But at last week's work session, board member Susan Evans offered what she called a "good compromise."

The Wake County school system appears likely to return to the practice of setting aside 10 percent of magnet school openings in the annual application process that would be filled on a random basis.

Wake used to set aside 10 percent of the magnet application seats for a more or less random lottery with the rest being filled based on selection criteria and priorities. That process was dropped this year under the choice plan.

But there was a consensus at Thursday's work session from board members to bring back the 10 percent seat lottery. if implemented, this change would most significantly impact families trying to get into high-demand magnet schools where there are for more applicants than openings.