The hot topic of revising Wake County's student assignment policy will be back on the agenda Thursday.

The agenda for Thursday's joint meeting of the student achievement and policy committees includes discussion of the three pillars of Policy 6200 — achievement, proximity and stability. This is the prelude to the changes that the board majority would make to reinstate diversity into assignment.

The board had been working to get the revision approved before the 2013-14 plan was adopted but slowed down when it opted to use the 2011-12 maps as the baseline for this fall. But if they want to incorporate achievement explicitly into assignments for 2014-15 and beyond they need to revise the policy first.

The committees will also discuss an update on revising the grading policy and an update on a new equity policy and achievement gap policy.

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.

The Wake County school system appears likely to return to the practice of setting aside 10 percent of magnet school openings in the annual application process that would be filled on a random basis.

Wake used to set aside 10 percent of the magnet application seats for a more or less random lottery with the rest being filled based on selection criteria and priorities. That process was dropped this year under the choice plan.

But there was a consensus at Thursday's work session from board members to bring back the 10 percent seat lottery. if implemented, this change would most significantly impact families trying to get into high-demand magnet schools where there are for more applicants than openings.

Wake County school administrators highlighted Thursday the various programs that are in place to provide unique academic offerings to the district's schools.

Historically, the magnet schools program has been the way that Wake schools have been beefed up academically. But during Thursday's school board student achievement committee meeting, staff highlighted the STEM schools, the Global Schools, early colleges, Renaissance Schools, K-8 academy, career academies and Title I program.

In a perhaps symbolic decision, the magnet programs office has been renamed magnet and curriculum enhancement.

Former Wake County school board member Beverley Clark wasn't the only speaker firing bombs at Tuesday's school board meeting.

As noted in today's article, critics of the new choice-based student assignment plan and supporters of magnet schools made up much of the turnout for public comment. Several speakers urged the board to make major changes to the new assignment plan.

Speakers also defended the magnet school program, downplaying the data indicating they have larger achievement gaps than non-magnet schools. They also denied that magnets were schools within a school as terms such as "social justice" and "diversity" were often mentioned.

Does the Wake County school system need to adopt a school board policy on equity of educational resources?

The answer, at least as of last week's school board policy committee meeting, is no for now. The consensus of the majority and minority members of the committee is that they can put the policy on hold.

For now, the board will see if the mission, vision and core beliefs statement adopted last year will do enough to promote equity.

School equity, student transfers and athletics will be on the agenda for today's first meeting of the reconstituted Wake County school board policy committee.

Now chaired by board member Jim Martin, the committee will review the proposed equity policy and its R&P. Martin worked on the policy when he was a community member of the economically disadvantaged student performance task force.

The committee has slotted half of the two-hour meeting to talk about the revised transfer policy before it's referred back to the full board on Tuesday.

Supporters and critics of Wake County's proposed math placement policy both sought the moral high ground during this week's school board discussion.

Critics of the policy argued that using too low a placement standard would do students a disservice and give them a weak math foundation. Supporters of the policy argued they were trying to promote equitable access to rigorous courses.

School board member Jim Martin got the discussion going Tuesday when he proposed a motion to indefinitely postpone the policy in favor of implementing this charge.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County school board member Jim Martin flexed some of his political muscle at Tuesday's school board meeting.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, Martin got the board to amend the plan to reallocate $130 million in unused bond money to cover the cost of design work for renovations to Athens Drive High's stadium. Staff is projecting they'll have $500,000 left over, which Martin noted would cover the design costs for the stadium.

The design work would jump start the renovation project. The actual funding for the $7.4 million in renovation work would come from the next bond issue.

Don't look for the new middle school math policy to be discussed, after all, at today's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

School board vice chairman John Tedesco said the math policy was removed from the agenda because of the need for staff to review how it would be impacted by the new common core of curriculum standards. He said hopes to have the task force discuss the policy in December.

Tedesco said today's meeting agenda is still in flux, with at least one topic expected to be the draft equity policy.

The meeting starts at 4:30 p.m. at Brentwood Elementary School, 3426 Ingram Road in North Raleigh.