Thursday night's community mass meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church dealt with the new Wake County student assignment plan, getting mediation for the school board protesters and assailing the conditions at Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, most the focus of the meeting led by the state NAACP and the Great Schools in Wake Coalition was on complaints about the assignment plan. The crowd of around 50 people, mainly supporters of the old diversity policy, were urged to contact school leaders to change the plan.

"If you let the plane fly in the air and you don’t make those course corrections that you feel need to be made in order to make it a more successful plan for all students so we have a fair and diverse and well-funded education for all students, then shame on us if we don’t advocate for the changes to make it happen," said Patty Williams of Great Schools in Wake.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The state NAACP and Great Schools in Wake Coalition are teaming up to host a "community mass meeting" on Thursday to discuss Wake County's new student assignment plan.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Martin Street Baptist Church, 1001 E. Martin St. in Raleigh. It comes after both groups had unsuccessfully urged the school board to delay implementation of the new plan by a year.

The meeting also comes after GSIW released a new fact sheet on feeder patterns on Thursday that levels several complaints about the new plan. Among the complaints is the charge that the plan's use of feeder patterns "are creating segregated schools."

"Middle schools including, Carnage and Durant Road, will likely become more segregated, poorer, and overall proficiency will decline dramatically," says the GSIW fact sheet. "Where there is concentrated poverty, recruiting and retaining teachers is difficult, and schools are costly to run. Racial segregation undermines student achievement and will not allow WCPSS to apply for federal funding for magnet and other programs, as we have in the past."

How worried should the Wake County school system be about how the new student assignment plan is impacting the magnet schools?

As noted in today's article, the Democratic board members expressed concern Tuesday about the sharp decline in magnet applications. They also raised concerns that not enough academically identified students got accepted into Carnage and Ligon middle schools, which operate the AG Basics magnet theme.

“It seems to me that demand for magnets has gone down by half,” said new Democratic school board member Christine Kushner in remarks to staff members. “I’m concerned about that decline. I hope it’s something you are paying attention to.”

The potential impact of the feeder patterns on school demographics is one reason members of the Democratic majority on the Wake County school board are raising concerns about the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, Democratic school board member Jim Martin cited his concerns about Carnage Middle School as an example of how the feeders can change a school. Martin said he's familiar with Carnage because his son is a magnet student there.

The particular issue at Carnage is that Walnut Creek Elementary will feed into the school starting in the 2012-13 school year. With Walnut Creek being such a large part of the feeder, he said it could hurt Carnage's Gifted and Talented/AG Basics program.

How much of an impact would going to express busing only for Wake County magnet schools have on the program?

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata and school board vice chairman John Tedesco don't think the potential change would have too much of an impact. Tata pointed to the recent online test drive in which more than 70 percent of participants said only having express busing wouldn't discourage them from attending magnet schools.

Tedesco pointed to how the magnet school program still turns away a few thousand students each year. Even if fewer applications come in, he said he doesn't expect the use of express busing will cause them to have fewer applicants than seats.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The trend of more Wake County families getting into magnet schools since the end of the old diversity policy is continuing.

School officials say 4,720 out of 8,476 applicants, or 55.7 percent, were accepted into magnet schools for the 2011-12 school year. Last year, 4,450 out of 8,732 applicants were accepted, or 51 percent.

A small part of this year's increase can be attributed to the opening of the new Wake NC State STEM Early College. But that's only 56 kids.

The meeting is still going on so I'll keep it short for now on tonight's 2011-12 Wake County student reassignment plan votes.

The board wound up voting individually on all 50 items in the plan after GOP vice chairwoman Debra Goldman backed the Democrats on not doing one vote. The board approved 47 of the 50 items, dropping 220 students from the plan to reduce it to around 3,500 students.

The board dropped plans to send 164 students to Carnage Middle. The board also dropped moving 56 kids from Lacy Elementary to Conn Elementary.

Goldman later joined the Democrats in killing Deborah Prickett's motion to direct staff to start a magnet program at York Elementary.

Things got very political on new Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata during his visit Monday at Enloe High School.

Toward the end of his tour, Tata stepped into one of social studies teacher Chad Keister's AP Government and Politics classes. Keister told Tata they'll be "simulating" cases that will be heard soon by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Keister then noted how the students had taken a "political ideology test" earlier this school year in which the class wound up identifying itself as "left of center." Tata says he'll be apolitical but his Facebook page and political writings indicate he'd be right of center.

CORRECTED TO SAY IT WAS AN AP GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS CLASS

New Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata will mark his first day on the job with a visit this morning to Enloe High School to meet with teachers, staff and students.

The visit to Enloe will put Tata right into the hotbed of opposition to eliminating the diversity policy. Tata met some Enloe students for the first time when they were among the protesters who gathered outside the Barbecue Lodge when he spoke to the Wake County Taxpayers Association meeting earlier this month.

In the afternoon, Tata will visit Carnage Middle School and Aversboro Elementary School.

Whether supporters of the diversity policy will support Tata now that he's officially on the job remains to be seen. During the reassignment hearings this month, people were still ripping into both the search process and Tata himself.

UPDATE

Click here to view the online story.

Following intense lobbying from parents at Daniels Middle School, the Wake County school board has agreed to only reassign 73 out of 170 students into the school.

Citing crowding issues, the board agreed to move in 73 students from Leesville Middle to Daniels. But the board killed plans to move in 97 students from Centennial, East Millbrook and West Millbrook middle schools.

Staff had recommended bringing in those 170 Southeast Raleigh students both to relieve crowding at Leesville and to send kids closer to home.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST