Will a likely one-week delay in the vote to fire Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata give enough time for his supporters to save his job?

As noted in today's article, it's really unlikely that any of the Republicans will agree today to amend the agenda to give the two-thirds majority needed to vote on Tata. This means the next time the board could act would be next Tuesday, when the Democrats would only need a simple majority.

Harvey Schmitt, president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, said he was disappointed about the discussions of Tata’s departure He said that he has expressed concern to board chairman Kevin Hill and vice chairman Keith Sutton.

This week marks what could be a potentially major week in the history of Wake County student assignment.

As noted in today's article, the school board's policy committee will meet Tuesday to begin discussion of rewriting the student assignment policy to reintroduce diversity as one of the components. On Saturday, the school board will go over the 2013-14 draft student assignment plan that could potentially be rewritten to reflect the diversity changes.

One of the questions the school board will face is how to word the diversity component in the assignment policy. Should it be a general statement, as proposed by staff, or a more explicit document that would have a variety of income and achievement targets?

Add the Wake County Republican Party to those acting on the rumors that the Wake County school board could fire Superintendent Tony Tata on Monday.

In the latest edition of the Elephant Express sent today, Wake GOP Chairwoman Susan Bryant is warning that "the radical extremists who have taken over the Wake County School Board are preparing to fire our great Superintendent Tony Tata, and we have to do everything we can to stop them." She says she'll lead the Wake GOP in opposing next year's likely school bond issue if Tata is fired.

Bryant is charging that board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin are the ones out to get Tata. She urges people to contact the board members to support Tata and to also show up outside Monday's school board meeting.

Is Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata in danger of losing his job?

"It was brought to my attention this afternoon by reliable sources that Wake County School Board members, (Jim) Martin, (Susan) Evans, and (Christine) Kushner were making plans to to remove Superintendent Tony Tata from his position," Phil Matthews, vice chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, wrote Sept. 11 on his Facebook page.

This is very concerning to me as a County Commissioner because Mr Tata has done an outstanding job for our school system. If this is true the citizens of Wake County will be very upset not to mention the majority of the Wake Commissioners. I will watch this situation very carefully!!"

UPDATE

The Hilburn Drive Academy PTA sent out this email this afternoon urging people to contact the school board to save Tata's job.

The email points to the positive changes that have been made at Hilburn since Tata became superintendent. On Sept. 11, Tata received an award from the school's PTA.

The Wake County Taxpayers Association announced today that it had filed a complaint with AdvancED asking the accreditation organization to investigate the actions of the Wake County school board majority.

The complaint hits on a variety of things, including the private meeting the new board members had with Michael Alves, the post-midnight vote on the student assignment directive and board member Jim Martin trying to arrange an assignment provision for parents going on sabbaticals,  

Several of the allegations deal with the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, from the behavior of some members in the audience of board meetings to charges they've unduly influenced the board majority.

Bob Geary is defending efforts by the three new Democratic members of the Wake County school board to delay public release of the new student assignment base maps.

In a blog post Wednesday for the liberal Independent weekly, Geary singles out board members Susan Evans, Christine Kushner and Jim Martin and says they were right for insisting that "the diversity piece (be) given form" before releasing the assignments.

"Letting the staff publish its online list of base schools by addresses — a list that would be preliminary at best, if only because no board member has even seen it yet, let alone thought about all the ways it needs to be changed — would've been a serious blunder," Geary writes.

"That was Tata's intention, apparently, to let parents start looking up their assignments on Friday. Talk about putting the cart before the horse."

Wake County school board members had some sharp disagreements Tuesday about when to release to the public the new draft base assignment maps, including the ability to go online to search by your address.

As noted in today's article, the three new Democratic board members argued for a delay so they could see the maps first and to keep the comments at a global perspective for now. But all the Republican board members argued that the info should be released to parents as soon as possible.

GOP school board member John Tedesco made the suggestion to delay the public hearings, which had been slated to start Monday, so that the parents could view the maps and have some time to digest the info and give the comments on their particular assignments.

New data shows that Wake County's year-round schools have imbalanced tracks in terms of enrollment, but school administrators say they're working to ease the problem over time.

Handouts from today's Wake County school board facilities committee meeting show that track four is above capacity while tracks two and three are way below their capacity. For instance, track two is operating at 68 percent of capacity districtwide in elementary schools and 44.5 percent in the middle schools.

The capacity figures are based on ideal long-range capacity, which is designed to reduce the number of modulars and mobiles on each campus. The capacity percentages would likely be lower if you base it off annual campus capacity, which takes into account all the temporary classrooms in use.

UPDATE

Click here to view Wake's plan for balancing the tracks and the 2012-13 year-round school utlilization by track.

Updated to make it clearer that decisions about collapsing tracks are no longer solely the call of the principal. It's now supposed to be done in coordination with the new plan to balance out tracks over time.

The discussion of underenrollment at year-round schools and new school needs for the next bond issue are on the agenda at today's Wake County school board facilities committee meeting.

The board is scheduled to discuss utilization of year-round schools. Board member Susan Evans, whose Apex district has a number of year-round schools, asked the committee last month to discuss which underenrolled year-round schools might be considered for conversion to a traditional calendar.

Wake had converted 23 schools to a year-round calendar and opened a number of year-round elementary schools and middle schools as part of the 2006 bond issue and construction program. With growth slowing down due to the recession, several multi-track year-round schools have been moved to a traditional calendar or converted to a single-track year-round calendar.

How did the Wake County school bus situation get so bad during the first two weeks of the traditional-calendar school year?

As noted in today's article, a combination of factors led to the problems that caused buses to come late or not all and generated a daily stream of media reports. It ultimately stems back to a desire to save money that led to the adoption of unrealistic bus routes that Wake has tried to remedy by putting back 41 of the 52 buses it had removed from service.

"We focused too much on becoming efficient, getting the right number of kids on the bus up, trying to squeeze too many stops too great a distance, particularly in those instances where we’ve got three tiers: one, two, three schools in a row," Don Haydon, Wake's chief facilities and operations officer told school board members last week.