The three new Democratic Wake County school board members all said tonight they're still planning on making changes to the new student assignment plan.

“I want the public to know that it is my intention and that of several other board members to monitor the data as it comes in,” said new Democratic board member Susan Evans. “We will respond to things that we feel warrant immediate response.”

Evans, speaking during the board comment section of the meeting, expressed frustration that they ran out of time to discuss the assignment plan during the work session.

Could the Wake County school board decide after all to implement for this fall seat set-asides at the high-performing schools or lift the priority for students from low-performing nodes?

Both topics are part of the student assignment update that will be presented at the work session. Topics, according to the handout, include assignment priorities for displaced magnet students and the number of AG students accepted into sixth-grade at Ligon and Carnage middle schools.  

Also on the agenda, is a staff presentation to change the bell schedules for nearly all of the schools this fall.

UPDATE

The school board ran out of time to discuss the student assignment update.

Click here for the online story about the bell schedule proposal.

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."

A member of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition is quoted in a article critical of school choice.

In an article originally published by Alternet, a liberal online newsmagazine, GSIW member Karey Harwood charges that school choice supporters are out to create a "divided society of winners and losers." The article, originally titled "5 Biggest Lies About the Right-Wing Corporate-Backed War on Our Schools" was reposted Tuesday by Salon.com for National School Choice Week.

"When they talk about choice, whose choices are they referring to?" Harwood says in the article. "Are the children of people who are savvy enough to get out of the public schools the only children who are worth educating in our society? What happens to the children who don’t get out?"

Longtime Wake County school board attorney Ann Majestic is the focus of a front-page article in last week's issue of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

The profile details how Majestic started a legal career that will lead to her in April receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys.

Much of the article focuses on Majestic's work in Wake, including her successful efforts to win over the initially suspicious Republican board majority in 2009. The article also talks about her personal views on the role of socioeconomic diversity in student assignment.

The Democratic majority on the Wake County school board is now taking public criticism over rejecting mediation with the protesters who were arrested at board meetings in 2010.

The Rev. Earl Johnson, pastor of Martin Street Baptist Church, announced today that he will hold a press conference on Tuesday to voice dissatisfaction with the school board's action. Democratic board members have tried to argue their decision doesn't mean they want trials but prosecutors say it's causing them to seek them.

Johnson will call on the school board to now ask for mediation.

The liberal/progressive Great Schools in Wake Coalition is being praised for helping oust the Republican majority on the Wake County school board.

In this week's issue of the liberal Independent Weekly, GSIW received one of the publication's 2012 Citizen Awards. The article cites Great Schools' various efforts over the past two years such as its white papers, community forums and having members speak at school board meetings.

"When the 2011 elections in Wake County resulted in a stunning defeat for the Republicans, with all five school board seats on the ballot won by pro-diversity candidates, GSIW was the major factor in the outcome," according to the article by Bob Geary.

It looks like protesters were wrong if they were hoping that the new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board would be more sympathetic that the Republicans were on the issue of mediation instead of prosecution.

As noted in today's article, the school board met in closed session last week and agreed to stick with the decision made by the former majority to recommend that the protesters who disrupted board meetings in 2010 go to trial.

Since it was discussed in closed session, neither the board members or board attorney Ann Majestic are saying why the board decided not to go with mediation.

Is the new Democratic majority on the Wake County school board too fragmented to be able to make changes to the diversity component of the new student assignment plan?

In an online article today for the liberal Independent weekly, Bob Geary writes that "the majority must come together," citing how they haven't agreed on changes to make to the assignment plan. Geary complains that the plan's "diversity pillar is weak to the point of collapse" and that the new majority "has taken no action to strengthen the plan since assuming office seven weeks ago."

"Looking over my notes from the two work sessions held by the school board on Jan. 3 and Jan. 10, I'm struck by the lack of cohesion among the five pro-diversity members," Geary writes. "They're clearly not on the same page. But that's not the problem so much as it is the fact that they don't seem to be making much of an effort to get on the same page — i.e., to reach a consensus among themselves about how to move diversity forward."