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

Bob Snidemiller, senior director of transportation, talked about how they're taking steps for the 2013-14 school year to avoid a repeat of this school year's bus problems. Steps include looking to hire 104 additional bus drivers, doing a more realistic analysis of routes and having drivers do practice runs during the actual times of day they'd be on the road.

School board member Jim Martin repeated his concerns the bond issue will fail if county commissioners take over school construction. He unsuccessfully tried to get wording included in the resolution requesting the bond that would talk about ensuring the quality of the projects that would be funded.

Should the Wake County school board reallocate money from the last bond issue to pay for upgrading Athens Drive High School's athletic stadium improvements or continue to leave it as part of the next construction program?

The Athens Drive community has been in an uproar since Wake County Commissioner Paul Coble questioned at last week's joint meeting including the project as part of the next capital improvement program. Parents spoke at Monday's commissioners meeting about why they felt the project needs to be funded.

Coble's response Monday was to question a request from the school system to reallocate money from the 2006 capital improvement program. He suggested the school board tap into that fund instead to pay for Athens Drive.

Much of the coverage of today's Wake County school board meeting will be focused on the release of the names of the superintendent finalists.

But the school board will be doing other things that will have a significant impact on the new superintendent. For one thing, the board will have the second and final reading on the revised student assignment policy that the new superintendent will be in charge of turning into a plan.

The second reading, as is standard, is listed on the consent agenda. It's pretty safe to say that one or more board members will request it be placed on the action agenda for it to be discussed and voted on separately.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, has got some definite plans in mind should the state House also sign off on the bill letting them take over school construction from the school board.

Senate Bill 236 would give commissioners in nine counties the ability to oversee all facets of school construction, including locating, purchasing, owning, building, maintaining and renovating schools. Bryan said it's his intention to press for the county to assume the majority of the construction responsibilities from the Wake County school system.

Bryan said he'd like to see how they can merge the county and school system's construction departments. The county would need more than its current staff to oversee the $1.8 billion in school property and handle projects from future bond issues.

it's safe to say that the ongoing struggle over who will control school construction in Wake County had a noticeable impact on Thursday's joint meeting of the school board and county commissioners.

As noted in today's article, several heated exchanges between school board members and commissioners took place as they discussed this $939.9 million school construction program. Officials readily acknowledged that the Senate's passage of Senate Bill 236 on Wednesday helped raise the emotions.

"You’ve got some lingering tension over the victory we had in the Senate yesterday,” said Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, in an interview. “We’ve got to come together to get a bond passed.”

More to come later, but there was an abrupt end to today's joint Wake County school board and board of commissioners meeting on the bond issue.

School board chairman Keith Sutton adjourned the meeting early to cut off the heated exchange between Commissioner Paul Coble and school board member Jim Martin. Coble accused the school board of not showing how it was going to stretch dollars to save money while Martin accused him of not making honest statements to the public.

In one particularly heated moment, Martin asked Coble to say how he'd save money. Martin asked if Coble wanted mandatory year-round, saying he'd offer to share with him all the letters from parents who hate the idea.

We've got some additional details this morning about the impact of this possible $939.9 million Wake County school construction program.

County finance staff project that it would take an $810 mllion bond referendum and $129.9 million in cash to cover all the projects. It would result in a 5.53 cent property tax rate increase, or $145.72 more per year on a $263,500 home.

Commissioners and school board members are reviewing the list of projects Thursday morning as the next step toward putting the bond referendum on the ballot. Click here for now to view the meeting materials.

The $939.9 million list doesn't include the $53.8 mllion in other projects that the school board says it has or expects to have funding for. You've got $43.8 million from available bond funding and $10 million from expected sales of school properties.

Are state Senate Republicans just giving some county governments more flexibility over school construction or are they trying to exact more political payback on the Democratic-led Wake County school board?

As noted in today's article, Senate Democrats charged that Republican legislators were deliberately going after the Wake school board in Senate Bill 236. Senate Republicans denied politics were involved, just as they denied that politics was behind Senate Bill 325, the Wake school board redistricting bill.

The bill comes as the Wake County school board and county commissioners meet this morning to go over a proposed $939.9 million school construction program that would largely be funded by the fall bond issue.

In a late addition to today's calendar, the state Senate approved legislation that would allow the Wake County Board of Commissioners and eight other county boards to take over school construction.

Senate Bill 236 was approved 33-15 with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition. Sen. Neal Hunt said the bill just makes business sense for commissioners to be in charge of construction.

But Sen. Josh Stein charged the bill was targeted at Wake County and was "payback" for the public voting in a Democratic school board majority. Sen. Dan Blue charged it was another case of "meddling" in the affairs of Wake and ensures defeat of the school bond issue this fall.

The bill now goes to the state House.

It turns out that potential renovations to Fuquay-Varina High School don't cost $82 million after all.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the Wake County Board of Commissioners, has complained at the last two joint meetings about the $82 million price tag for Fuquay-Varina High. He's questioned why the renovation would cost so much.

School staff now say that the figure is actually $63 million. Joe Desormeaux, assistant superintendent for facilities, told school board members last week that "we found an error in our program on the cost per square foot that did a significant change as you can see with Fuquay-Varina."

The Fuquay-Varina High renovation isn't on the short list of recommended projects for the fall bond issue. The bond list will be discussed at Thursday's joint meeting of the school board and commissioners.