The Wake County school board's superintendent search committee has backed hiring Chicago-based Heidrick & Struggles to help conduct the search for a new search.

Heidrick & Struggles was backed Monday night over three cheaper firms. Heidrick is offering to do the search for $82,500 plus expenses while the N.C. School Boards Association was the cheapest at $15,000 plus expenses.

Debra Goldman, chairwoman of the board's superintendent search committee, said they were impressed by Heidrick & Struggles' expertise. Heidrick has been involved in superintendent searches such as Houston and Philadelphia.

The diversity policy isn't the only difference separating Wake County school board members.

As noted in today's article, the board is also split about how to view charter schools, private schools and home schools. Members of the new board majority are more willing to embrace these educational alternatives even as they say they want to bring more families back into the school system.

“Honestly, I would like to see the public schools get involved with the charter schools and develop a better working relationship because of the way that they tend to be theme schools,” said school board chairman Ron Margiotta. “If we want to talk about it’s being competition, I welcome the competition.”

Members of the new Wake County school board majority put their stamp today on the state legislative lobbying agenda.

The board amended the agenda, which includes the items that Wake wants the General Assembly to approve, to say that the district opposes giving taxing authority to local school boards. Previous school boards have lobbied to get taxing authority from the state.

New school board member John Tedesco said he likes having the checks of balances of relying on the county, state and federal governments for funding.

North Carolina charter schools made the news last week with a pair of reports with vastly different viewpoints.

A report from the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh think tank, said that 150 traditional schools across the state would be forced to close if the State Board of Education extended new charter school performance standards to all public schools. In the Wake County school system, that would include three regular schools and one alternative school.

The Locke Foundation argues that it's unfair to hold charter schools to stricter standards than traditional public schools. New standards for charter schools say they can be shut down if for two of three consecutive years they don't meet or exceed 'expected growth' in test scores and have an overall performance composite score of less than 60 percent.

The Wake County school system should be getting even more competition from a pair of local charter schools.

AS noted in today's North Raleigh News article, Franklin Academy in Wake Forest and Casa Esperanza in North Raleigh got state approval last week for expansion plans. Franklin Academy will now be able to expand by nearly 400 students while Casa Esperanza can now offer seventh- and eighth-grades.

The approval comes as charter schools are taking applications for the 2010-11 school year.

The school district got some bad financial news earlier this month.

As noted in today's article, Wake and other school districts that are home to charter schools are now figuring how much more money they owe to comply with a state court ruling. At issue is how it seems Wake and other districts undercounted the amount of money it needed to turn over to charter schools.

With 13 charter schools and more than 5,000 charter students this year, the price tag could be big in Wake, especially if charters ask for the money retroactively. Wake is still calculating the amount it owes.

State Rep. Nelson Dollar is defending his decision to work for Horace Tart's Wake school board reelection campaign.

Dollar, who runs J.N. Dollar & Associates, a media and public relations consulting firm, pointed out that he had also been a consultant in Tart's 2005 campaign.

Dollar's continued involvement with Tart has raised eyebrows with some people, especially considering he attended the Wake Schools Community Alliance's February meeting in Holly Springs.

The John Locke Foundation is pitching a new checklist for voters to use when deciding which school board candidates to vote for this year.

The 28-question checklist touches on a variety of areas. Some of the questions may have a more conservative bent, which isn't surprising considering who put the list together.

Here are some of the questions:

You can understand why Casey Ash is leaving the Wake school system to take a job teaching social studies at a much higher paying charter school in New York City.

As some of you have already noted, Ash was mentioned in a New York Times article last week about a new charter school opening in September in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

Ash was billed as being part "of an eight-teacher dream team" that will receive a salary of $125,000. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year.

While these are more state than Wake issues, there's obviously some interest in them here.

Yesterday, the state House passed H593, which would allow school districts to start traditional-calendar schools as early as the second Monday in August instead of the current Aug. 25 date.

The state House also passed H856, which would raise the cap on charter schools to 106 schools. The cap has been locked at 100 since the start of charter schools in this state.

Even if the state Senate doesn't approve either bill this year, the big deal is that they passed the crossover legislation deadline. This means both bills could be brought back later this session.