Wake County school administrators are dialing back their recommendations to have K-12 magnet feeders as part of the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, the revised draft feeder plan list posted on Monday includes a number of changes requested by parents. Those parents mounted aggressive campaigns to keep their existing feeder patterns as opposed to being put in new ones that would have them go to magnet secondary schools.

Some of the most vocal opposition came from families at Brooks, Douglas and Joyner elementary schools. They wanted to keep their historic feeder patterns that had them going to closer non-magnet secondary schools.

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.

Should a Wake County student who gets into a fight at a school bus stop be subject to a long-term suspension?

As noted in today's article, Superior Court Judge Carl Fox ruled Monday that Wake did not have jurisdiction to issue a long-term suspension to a Millbrook High student who punched a student at a bus stop in September 2009.

Wake had insisted it could suspend students for behavior that takes place off campus, even when it's not part of a school-sponsored trip or activity.

UPDATE

Click here to view the court order.

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

The one figure that people kept repeating out of Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was 35 percent.

As noted in today's article, 35 percent is this year's gain in Algebra I enrollment under the new EVAAS placement guidelines compared to last year's total. There was a 26 percent increase in pre-Algebra enrollment. Overall, the gain for both courses was 30 percent.

"I know this is new for a lot of principals, but I want to really thank all of you for taking on the challenges," said school board member John Tedesco, chairman of the task force at Thursday's meeting. "Because of that we saw measurable gains. You can’t dispute that. A 35 percent increase is impressive."

UPDATE

SEE END OF POST FOR THURSDAY'S POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON MATH PLACEMENT UPDATE

Here's hoping that kids remember to wash their hands and sneeze into tissues.

As noted in today's article, school officials are urging parents to stress good hygiene to their kids to reduce the possibility of an H1N1 outbreak in school.

To help things along, Wake is among the school systems who are partnering up with health officials to offer free seasonal flu shots to students.

A not so cheerful year for traditional-calendar schools will start tomorrow.

As noted in today's article, students are returning to schools where class sizes will be up and some elective courses have been dropped. Some teachers are still out of a job and supply budgets have been sliced.

"Our parents understand where we are with this economy," said Chip Mack, the new principal of Davis Drive Elementary School.

It looks like Wake was trying to steer more people into eight magnet schools this year via the second-chance letters.

For those who might not recall, this year was the first time that people whose magnet applications were rejected were sent a letter giving them a second chance to apply to another school.

You only got the offer if staff thought your departure wouldn't have a negative impact on your base school.

More than 13,000 families filed applications for magnet schools, year-round schools or traditional-calendar schools last month, according to data released today.

School officials said 8,722 applicants requested magnet schools, with 3,848 asking for spots in year-round schools and 2,860 wanting to be in traditional-calendar schools. The numbers include those who asked for multiple categories, such as both magnet schools and year-round schools.

School administrators said they’d begin placing applicants on Wednesday.

We'll see Tuesday just how far the school board is willing to go to make it harder for some families to make it into magnet schools, year-round schools or traditional-calendar schools.

During Tuesday's work session, staff will ask the board "to identify any revisions or additional guidelines" to the magnet/select criteria. Click here for the guidelines that were used last year.

As noted in a previous post, there's been growing complaints from board members that the current magnet selection guidelines aren't strict enough.