Prospective Wake County school board applicants were grilled today on a range of topics, such as their views on magnet schools, student assignment, the superintendent search and the challenges facing Eastern Wake County.

Each board member asked the same question to the applicants. They asked the question from Debra Goldman as well, even though she resigned Friday.

Here were the eight questions:

Here's a recap of the interviews of Tom Benton and Don Mial for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Benton was the most direct and explicit of all the applicants so far on his views on diversity, student assignment and magnet schools. His familiarity with those issues from having spent most of his 32 years in education in Wake showed.

Benton said he supported using student assignment to promote diverse schools and also supports the magnet school program. But at the same time he said they need to balance the concerns from parents about reassignment, including low-income students who are being moved.

Here's a recap of the interviews from Wendy Ford and Hilda McCullers for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Ford repeatedly stressed that she knew what the board was going through having served on a school board in upstate New York for 19 years. She said she's done everything the board now faces, including being involved in two superintendent searches.

Another thing that Ford frequently mentioned is that Wake needs to deal with competition from the popularity of charter schools, especially parents who are dissatisfied with the district.

In addition to reorganizing the transportation department, the Wake County school board will appoint a new member today, approve a new voluntary desegregation resolution and discuss school facilities crowding and new school sites.

The board has set aside five hours to interview the eight applicants for the District 1 vacancy. They'll all be asked the same questions.

The vote will take place at the end of the regular meeting because the new member takes office once the vote occurs. Some board members were worried that the new member would vote tonight on items without being fully briefed.

Some of the groups who've spent the past three years fighting efforts to eliminate diversity from Wake County's student assignment policies are now focusing on statewide education issues.

As noted in today's article by John Frank and Lynn Bonner, several liberal advocacy groups have joined to form Public Schools First NC. Their goal during the legislative agenda that opens today is to counter "the growing threat to privatize and weaken North Carolina’s public schools."

Members of PSFNC include the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children, the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association and the N.C. Justice Center.

A recent Duke University study is giving high marks to the Wake County school system's old socioeconomic diversity policy.

The study found that the racial balance in North Carolina’s public schools has remained steady since 2005-06. But the study also that students are increasingly separated by income.

Amid this picture, the Duke study notes that "Wake County, with its longstanding policy of busing for economic balance, maintains relatively integrated schools." In contrast, the study found that "districts that have pursued more choice-driven plans in lieu of busing, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, have higher rates of racial imbalance."

The eight applicants for the Wake County school board vacancy are giving their views on diversity, armed guards in schools, the choice plan, performance pay for teachers, the school construction bond issue and charter schools.

The answers are part of an article in this week's issue of the liberal Independent Weekly, which focused on their views on diversity and armed guards. The diversity responses run the gamut from support to opposition to its use in student assignment.

On one end are these people whose views on diversity seem to be the closest in line to the board majority.

More to come later, but the Wake County school system is defending the decision by the school board's Democratic majority to drop the choice-based student assignment plan in its response to AdvancED.

In this 28-page report sent today, Wake says the board majority's vote was based on “reasonable beliefs that there were demonstrable and substantial problems with the Choice Plan.”

“While four Board members believed that the Choice Plan remained viable and that any problems could be successfully addressed, five members came to the conclusion that a fundamental change in approach was needed,” according to the report.

UPDATE

AdvancED hasn't even reviewed the report yet. It's WRAL misinterpreting that Wake is telling AdvancED that it should find the complaint as being without merit.

Hunter Elementary School, a magnet school near downtown Raleigh, looks like it will be among the 13 Wake County schools that will have a full enrollment cap placed on it today for the rest of the school year.

But the discussion last week about where the capped out base children for Hunter would go gives more insight into the differences between the board members about how students should be assigned. It could serve as an another example of what direction the new 2014-15 student assignment plan will take.

Last week, staff added Hunter to the original list of 12 schools it was recommending for a full cap for the rest of the 2012-13 school year. Students who are capped out of Hunter would be given the option of Oak Grove, Timber Drive and Washington elementary schools.

It looks like there's still going to be a priority for Wake County students from high-performing nodes to get into magnet schools, but there won't be a transfer priority for applicants from low-performing schools to get into high-performing ones.

Both issues became intertwined during last week's student assignment work session as board members and staff worked through the details of the draft 2013-14 student assignment plan. The final vote will come during Tuesday's meeting.

During last week's discussion, you had discussion about how far the board should go to keep students from leaving some schools and who should get priority for magnet access.