Work will resume today on setting the ground work for a 2013 Wake County school construction bond issue.

The school board's facilities committee will continue discussion today on the draft capital planning issues that would frame the next construction program. The committee will also receive information on the process for determining needs for new schools.

One of the questions facing the school board and ultimately the county commissioners is whether to go for a referendum in spring or fall 2013.

A spring bond issue would have low voter turnout since nothing else is on the ballot but it would speed up when schools could be built. A fall bond issue would attract a larger turnout but could push the opening of new schools back by a year because of when the money would be available.

UPDATE

Today's meeting was cancelled becuase of a lack of a quorum.

School board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin attended the meeting. Evans said that Chris Malone, the committee chairman, called in sick. She said they waited until 4:30 p.m., 30 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, to see if board member Deborah Prickett would arrive.

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

The Wake County school board came very close on Tuesday to not having adopted a budget request for the 2012-13 school year.

As noted in today's article, the 6-3 vote in favor the budget proposal was very much in doubt until the roll call vote. Every vote was needed because it took a two-thirds majority to waive a policy that limits Wake from using more than half its fund balance to balance the budget.

Signs of the budget being in trouble came early in the discussion when Democratic board members Kevin Hill and Jim Martin said they couldn't vote yes. They didn't feel that the requested $8.8 million increase from the Wake County Commissioners was enough in light of cuts in recent years.

How much revision is in store for year two of the new Wake County student assignment plan?

As noted in today's article, new Democratic school board members Susan Evans and Christine Kushner acknowledge it's too difficult to make changes at this late date for the 2012-13 school year. But they are talking about looking at substantive changes for the 2013-14 school year.

Kushner talked about the possibility of merging the choice plan with the base assignment component of the old plan.

Don't look for the word "waitlist" to be included in the revised version of the Wake County school system's student transfer policy.

During today's work session, board members agreed to modify wording that says requests may be denied for "application for transfers to schools if classes are full and a waitlist remains in place for seats at that school."

They'll replace the waitlist reference to say that transfers may be denied if there is no capacity at the school or at that grade level.

School board members Jim Martin and Susan Evans said they were concerned that putting in the waitlist reference would discourage people from seeking transfers.

UPDATE

The transfer policy was unanimously approved tonight on second and final reading.

School administrators and Wake County school board members agreed to recommend some changes to this version of the student transfer policy during Wednesday's policy committee meeting.

One change is to modify the title of Section B to say "Reasons Transfer Requests May Be Approved by Office of Student Assignment." A similar change is being made to the title of Section C to add in the words student assignment staff.

The wording was added to try to convey to parents that Section B and Section C don't bind the school board when it handles transfer appeals.

UPDATE

Click here to view the policy that will be voted on Tuesday.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata and three school board members are heading to Pittsburgh this weekend to see what education lessons they can learn from the Steel City.

The Wake school contingent is among a group of local elected officials, government officials, business people and community leaders who are participating in this year's Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce Inter-City Visit and Leadership Conference. The group will meet with different Pittsburgh leaders to see how the city has transformed itself.

On the education side, the part of the trip that will most likely be relevant is a discussion about The Pittsburgh Promise Program. Students who graduate from Pittsburgh Public Schools or local charter high schools with at least a 2.5 GPA and 90 percent attendance record receive up to $40,000 in college scholarships for in-state schools.

SEE UPDATE/CORRECTION ON HOW COSTS OF TRIP ARE BEING COVERED

More details to come, but the three new Democratic Wake County school board members are making a bid today to derail the two new single-sex leadership academies.

During the presentation at today's work session (click here for the handout), school board member Susan Evans said it wasn't fiscally responsible to start the academies now.

"Maybe it’s late in the game to have this discussion, but we haven’t had the chance to discuss it until now," Evans said.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The return of Wake County school board standing committees begins this week.

School board chairman Kevin Hill has assigned the other eight board members to be a chair or vice chair of one committee and to serve on another committee. This comes after former school board chairman Ron Margiotta drew complaints when he assigned majority members to as many as five committees while putting Hill on only one committee.

All the committees have two Democrats and two Republicans. But Hill is an ex-officio member of all the committees so he could attend to break a tie.

Here's the dolphin email exchange between Wake County school board member Susan Evans and the leadership of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition that was referenced in a recent Triangle Politics column.

For the backstory, Allison Backhouse forwarded to board members and staff a March 7 email that was sent to Evans, fellow school board member Christine Kushner and several GSIW leaders. One sentence included how an 8-year-old wrote that "a dolphin breaths through an a--hole on the top of its head."

Evans replied back via her personal email account that "I think TT may be a dolphin :)," referring to Superintendent Tony Tata.