Here's a quick recap of today's Wake County school board work session.

School board members and administrators are concerned that Gov. Pat McCrory's budget proposal would cut about $12 million for teacher assistant positions in Wake. That would cost 400 positions so Wake will lobby for the funding to be included in the final state budget.

McCrory's budget would eliminate TA funding in second- and third-grades.

The Wake County school board will have a wide range of items to deal with today, including budget, school capping, school calendars, school name changes and school board election districts.

During the work session, one topic is "Wake County Board of Education's Support of the Current Election Districts for Board Positions." Presumably the board will be asked to officially oppose Senate Bill 325, which would change the election districts.

The board will continue to discuss the budget and go over instructional calendars, presumably for the 2014-15 school year.

The Wake County legislative delegation should expect to hear more today from people opposing bills that would change how Wake County school board members are elected and take away their control of school construction.

WakeUP Wake County is urging people to show up again like they did at the March 25 public hearing. The new hearing takes place before the Wake school board will discuss during Tuesday's work session supporting the current election districts instead of going to the ones in S325, the school board election bill.

With WakeUP Wake, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and the Wake County Democratic Party urging people to show up March 25 to oppose the school bills, you can guess what the turnout was like. Here are some of the comments from the March 25 hearing.

The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce's proposal for resolving the fight over school ownership and school board elections appeared to fizzle Wednesday.

As noted in today's article, Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, said no Wednesday to the chamber's proposal that both boards work out agreements before the pending state legislation passes.

“It’s a little late in the day for the Chamber and they’re not presenting much,” Bryan said.

The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce announced today it's not supporting the two state Senate bills that would change who owns schools in Wake County and how school board members are elected.

Rather than rely on the bills, the Chamber is calling for the school board and Wake County Board of Commissioners to jointly working together to deal with the issues. They say they hope the pressure from the legislation will cause them to work out something although there's not as much incentive for the commissioners to agree.

They're reviving the 2008 deal in which they're calling for the county to take over ownership, construction and acquisition of schools with the school district retaining siting, design and maintenance. As part of the deal, the commissioners would have to agree to increase school operating funding through a "multi-year predictable, expanding funding stream."

The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce will speak out on recent state Senate bills that would significantly impact the Wake County school system.

According to the Chamber's press release, the group will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. Wednesday at its headquarters to comment on S236, the school ownership bill, and S325, the Wake school board election bill.

"As a longtime, ardent supporter of the Wake County Public School System, the Chamber will deliver its opinion and recommendations regarding recent legislation affecting school system governance," according to the press release.

The Chamber had polled its members on the school ownership idea. The Chamber had backed a proposal in 2008 to turn over ownership and construction of schools to the Wake County Board of Commissioners if that group also agreed to sharply increase school funding.

In case you don't get The Cary News, new Wake County school board member Bill Fletcher is showing why he was picked by the board majority to fill the District 9 vacancy,

In this Q&A in Sunday's edition, Fletcher says its "not a good idea" to turn over construction, ownership and maintenance of schools to the Wake County Board of Commissioners. In terms of the rest of the commissioners' legislative agenda, Fletcher says having four at-large school board seats is "a poor idea" and he's not in favor of using tax dollars to build charter schools.

On student assignment, Fletcher says that "in order to be successful in a diverse society, we need diverse schools." Fletcher also says Cary parents think stability is more important than proximity.

Fletcher said he will be at Caribou Coffee at 109 S.W. Maynard Road in Cary at 2 p.m. Thursday in case anyone wants to drop in and “just have a little chat." That meeting will come right after what could be another tense meeting that morning between the school board and commissioners.

Is Senate Bill 325 essentially a second try for Republicans to hold a majority on the Wake County school board?

As noted in today's article, the stated main purpose of the new legislation is to give individual Wake County voters the ability to elect a second school board member. But the bill also lets state Republican lawmakers rewrite the boundaries for Wake's school board districts.

This comes after the redistricting plan approved by the former Republican school board majority in 2011 didn't turn out as some thought that it would in ensuring GOP control of the state's largest school district.

The new bill that would change the way Wake County school board members are elected is getting opposition from liberal groups.

In this blog post today, Rob Schofield of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch writes that S325 "would change the rules of how school board members are elected in the capital county in a way that is clearly designed to alter the board’s power structure and move things in a conservative direction."

"It’s hard to believe that anyone could advance such a blatant power grab with a straight face," Schofield writes. "...Given their record thus far in the 2013 session, however, it appears that neither shame nor embarrassment are conditions that tend to afflict the conservative ideologues running the show on Jones Street.

One clarification on the comments that Schofield writes about Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners. What Bryan was surprised about Wednesday is that the bill didn't go as far as they wanted to let voters pick a majority of school board seats.

Is S325 the final version of what will be passed legislatively for changes in Wake County school board elections?

As noted in today's article, the bill would only let voters pick two of nine board seats instead of the five out of nine requested by Wake County Commissioners. Voters would pick the one for their district and in the half-county district they'd now also be located in.

But the bill, which was filed Wednesday on the last day for local bills in the Senate, could be revised before things are done.

UPDATE

Census records show that the bill would put John Tedesco in the same district as Tom Benton and Kevin Hill. This means District 1 would include parts of Garner, Zebulon and the watershed area in Northeast Wake