Two different pictures are emerging about the situation taking place at the new Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata acknowledged that an enrollment cap is needed at Walnut Creek to deal with overcrowding. But Tata, pointing to the additional resources provided to the school, says that Walnut Creek is "on the right track."

In contrast, Cash Michaels calls the overcrowding situation a "crime." He accuses Tata and the Republican board majority "of literally turning their backs on the growing problem there."

UPDATE

Click here for an updated version of the article in The Carolinian that Cash Michaels wrote about the crowding situation at Walnut Creek.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata said today that he will ask the school board on Tuesday for permission to cap enrollment at the new Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh.

Instead of just 780 students as planned, Walnut Creek now has more than 930 students. This comes amid all the scrutiny about Walnut Creek, where concerns that it would open as a high-poverty school with many low-performing students led to a mass infusion of additional resources.

"We wanted to make it a high demand school and we did," Tata said at today's press conference.

A change in law last summer led UNC-Chapel Hill to inadvertently admit too many out-of-state students.

The result, a $158,000 reduction to its budget.

That's how the UNC system rule on out-of-state freshmen works. No more than 18 percent of a public university's freshman class can come from outside North Carolina. If a campus exceeds that ceiling two years running, it gets sanctioned.

Carolina missed twice, thus the fine, as explained here.

But the twist in the story is that it only exceeded the cap after a group of out-of-state athletes headed to the university who up until last summer would have been counted as in-staters had a change in status thanks to a legislative decision.

The parents of the Breckenridge community of Morrisville have apparently won their victory with the Wake County school board.

The board preliminarily agreed today to drop the reassignment of the 220 Breckrenrdge students from Cedar Fork Elementary to Green Hope Elementary. Breckrenridge parents had heavily lobbied to stay at Cedar Fork.

The Breckenridge students have been at Cedar Fork since the school opened. When the students were reassigned to Alston Ridge Elementary, Cedar Fork was left as the traditional-calendar application school.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

The Wake County school system may be paying again for its decision to pack Forest Pines Drive Elementary and North Forest Pines Elementary on the same campus.

At the recommendation of staff, the school board took the unusual step on Tuesday of implementing an enrollment cap during the middle of a school year. The board's action to put a cap on Forest Pines will allow Growth Management to turn away new students this school year from the school's base and send them to either Wakefield or Rolesville elementary schools.

It's the third time that Forest Pines has been capped since the 2008-09 school year.

The Wake County school board's agenda for Tuesday covers a wide range of things, including student assignment, eliminating the Effectiveness Index and relocating Central Office to Cary.

During the work session that begins at 3 p.m., the board will discuss board member Kevin Hill's consensus-building approach to developing a new multi-year student assignment plan. They'll also get into a talk on the 2011-12 assignment plan, the third year of the plan adopted by the old board.

Also during the work session, the board will discuss whether to keep the process of having only one regular action meeting per month.

UPDATE

If passed, the resolution would essentially kill off the Effectiveness Index. E&R has said that the only resources put in are staff time.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles stops just short of turning cartwheels today, so pleased he appears to be at the final state budget rolling out this week.

Bowles has reason to be happy. The final budget cut to public universities is $70 million, far less than the $175 million the State House had proposed.

The House proposal would have forced the elimination of 1,700 positions across the university. It isn't yet clear how many jobs will be lost to the approved $70 million cut because a provision allowing state campuses to increase tuition up to $750 complicates the math.

A tuition hike would increase revenue for campuses, but it isn't yet clear, officials say, whether campuses want to raise those rates.

Here's what Bowles has to say about the state budget.

“Legislators really stood up for our University and our 225,000 students in these hard times when money is scarce. On a relative basis and particularly considering the economic climate, the 2010-11 state budget we received from the General Assembly was nothing short of remarkable.

We knew there were going to be significant cuts in every part of state government, and the University took its fair share. But the legislature really worked hard to help us protect the quality of education we can deliver to our students. While there were targeted cuts to various University programs, the legislature held additional management flexibility cuts to $70 million.

In the end, the General Assembly also committed to fully fund the University’s requests for need-based financial aid, enrollment growth, and operating reserves for new buildings. It also adopted the Board of Governors’ alternative tuition plan for the coming year and authorized additional tuition increases to help offset the impact of budget cuts. Importantly, the final budget does not include a provision that would have effectively capped University enrollment growth and denied access to qualified North Carolinians.

This tangible show of support is vitally important to the economic future of North Carolina. The Board of Governors, our boards of trustees, faculty, staff, and most importantly, our students join me in thanking the General Assembly for this remarkable show of confidence in our public universities.”

A controversial proposal by State House budget writers to cap enrollment at UNC system schools is dead.

The plan to limit public universities to 1 percent enrollment growth in 2011-12 has been removed from the state budget, the final version of which will roll out tonight and be voted on later this week, said Schorr Johnson, spokesman for Senate Leader Marc Basnight.

The proposal was met with surprise by university leaders who have long valued access and affordability as the two key principles guiding higher education policy in North Carolina.

But House leaders said the proposal was not intended to limit access to education, but rather an attempt to get a handle on some difficult budget and enrollment planning.

(With reporting from Benjamin Niolet)

UNC System President Erskine Bowles said Friday that after talking with key House members the day before that there was a good chance the House would drop a provision from its budget to cap UNC system enrollment growth at 1 percent annually.

That cap would have prevented about 2,700 qualified students from being admitted this year, system officials have said.

 Bowles, speaking at a news conference after a Board of Governors meeting, said that he had also talked about the proposed cap with Gov. Beverly Perdue Friday morning and that she, like him, was angry at the thought of the system turning away qualified applicants for the first time in its history.

Perdue told him that the first reason major employers give for deciding to move  operations to North Carolina is the university system, specifically the quality of education it offers and quantity of well-educated graduates it turns out each year, Bowles said.

"We are the economic recruitment tool for North Carolina, and that's why she is going to support our efforts," he said.

UNC Board of Governors chairwoman Hannah Gage said legislators were catching heat over the proposal from voters in their districts.

"I think this has been very upsetting to families and parents," she said. "The idea that a qualified student would not be accepted because we have shut the door has offended a lot of people."

On the News & Observer's editorial page today, a  a denunciation of a proposal to limit enrollment next year at UNC system campuses.

The editorial follows a recent story about a state House provision that would implement the unprecedented cap, an attempt to smooth the enrollment planning process.

UNC leaders were quick last week to question the proposed revision, saying it ran contrary to the state's dual higher education philosophies of access and affordability.

Today's editorial takes a similar tact. It reads in part:

"But saving money by limiting enrollment via statute is a dire step. One, for some would-be students - students who otherwise would qualify for admission - it will break that solemn and for many, life-changing promise of opportunity. Two, it has not been shown that enrollment has been explosive at all campuses. Some probably have exceeded sensible growth patterns, but that is hardly the case with all schools."