The Wake Education Partnership is offering some insight on the tricky balance that the Wake County school board will face between renovation and new schools in the upcoming school bond issue.

In the latest issue of In Context, WEP notes Thursday that building the maximum number of new schools will ease crowding. But not doing renovations could lead to a case of "you can pay me now or pay me more later" as problems build up over time.

"Finding the right balance will be frustrating," the WEP writes. "Commissioner Phil Matthews asked if it wouldn't be cheaper to just knock down the old schools and replace them. The short answer is, it's not."

Wake County school board member John Tedesco is warning he might not support the fall school bond issue.

Tedesco gave the warning during Tuesday's school board work session as he complained about this $925 million proposed list of projects. He's upset that the list doesn't include funding for renovations at two Garner schools and only a small amount to start work on Garner High School.

"Excuse me if this is not a priority list of bonds from somebody who's been a vocal advocate for our bond thus far, saying we need it, telling others that we need it extensively," Tedesco said. "This is not one that I could support."

The Wake County school board will deal with a variety of items today, including the school board election bill, student assignment, the budget and the projects that would be funded by the next bond issue.

During the regular meeting, the school board will vote on a resolution supporting the current boundaries that were adopted in 2011. This is in response to Senate Bill 325, which passed the state Senate on Monday.

During the work session, the board will continue discussion on the revisions that will be made to the student assignment policy. The latest draft talks about "minimizing the concentrations of low-performing students at each school" and "minimizing high concentrations of students from low income families at each school."

It took a bit of prodding Thursday before Wake County school board members finally agreed to publicly support having a school bond this year.

Following the consensus vote in favor of a $900 million school construction program, Commissioner Tony Gurley noted that commissioners have made a successful school bond their top goal this year.

Gurley asked school board members if it's their goal this year as well to have a successful bond issue. Gurley asked because several school board members have publicly talked about not going with an Oct. 8 bond vote in favor of waiting until spring 2014.

The Wake County school board and the Wake County commissioners may have agreed in principle to a school construction dollar amount, but they're still split on how to spend the money.

As noted in today's article, both boards agreed Thursday to target $900 million for the amount with the details to come later about what would be funded. As Thursday's discussion showed, the issue of how much to spend on renovations vs. new schools is a sticking point between the two boards.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, resumed Thursday the questions he had at the last meeting about why some renovations have such high dollar amounts.

The often-divided Wake County school board and county commissioners came together Thursday to say they support in concept a $911 million school construction program.

The process is far from over as the final details of what would be funded and the exact amount of the program still need to be hammered out. But today's voice vote was meant to show the school board what the commissioners would be comfortable with accepting.

They'll basically tweak Scenario 3, which would have 11 new schools and seven major renovations. This would have a $789 million bond with a tax increase of 5.1 cents, or $135.44 more on a $250,000 home.

The school board also agreed to back a fall 2013 bond referendum after several members previously said waiting until spring 2014 might be better.

Are Wake County taxpayers willing to pay $100 more a year in property taxes, and in some cases well above that amount, to pay for a school construction bond issue?

School and county staff fleshed out today the scenarios that were originally presented to the school board's facilities committee last week. We now have updated figures, a bond amount and a tax impact.

The most expensive option — $2.3 billion — is something that school and county leaders acknowledge is too high to ask. It would cover 32 new schools, 28 major renovation and a variety of other projects.

One of the big questions today is how the Wake County school board — and especially the Wake County Board of Commissioners — will react to the proposed school bond scenarios.

Joe Bryan, chairman of the board of commissioners, had said last week that the $609 million option was probably too low and the $2.3 billion was definitely too high. He said that the $854 million and $1.1 billion scenarios would be good places to begin the conversation for a fall bond amount.

But how will Bryan's fellow Republican commissioners react to the idea? Will the Democratic commissioners push for the $1.1 billion since it's the largest of the scenarios that they could probably get on the ballot?

Another thing to see at today's joint meeting is if school board members are more comfortable with going ahead with an Oct. 8 bond referendum as opposed to waiting until 2014. If they do back a fall bond, a final decision has to be made by the end of June.

Since there's already been discussion about it in one of the blog posts, I thought I'd create a separate one on this new YouTube video looking at the difference in offerings between Wake County magnet schools and non-magnet schools.

The video from Barbara Walters points to the large number of electives provided at magnet schools, particularly the GT and IB schools. She contrast it with the much smaller number of options at the non-magnet schools.

Walters charges that the disparity is the result of a deliberate "suppression" of options at non-magnet schools. Walters said the public should threaten to not support a school bond unless the school board develops an appropriate policy governing the relationship between magnet and non-magnet schools.

Historically, non-magnets in Wake have been restricted in what they can offer. Former Superintendent Tony Tata had been chipping away at those distinctions during his tenure.

Should Wake County's next middle school be built without a track or should the district buy land so that one can be built on site?

M-8, located off Leesville Church Road in northwest Raleigh, is a small property that initially was considered for use as an elementary school. So when the decision was made to open it as a middle school with a smaller than typical property size, no track was included in the design.

But school administrators asked the school board's facilities committee last week to consider authorizing the acquisition of enough land around M-8 so that a track can be built.