What responsibility does the Wake County school system have in providing transportation to preassigned rising sixth- and ninth-graders who don't have bus service this fall?

As noted in today's article, the school board voted to direct staff to, when possible, modify existing bus routes to accommodate students or to offer them a spot at a school on their proximity list that would give them transportation.

But that motion stops short of guaranteeing bus service to their feeder school. And that motion only extends to students who are receiving bus service this year and would lose it this fall, not transfer students who now don't get bus service.

The Wake County school board will deal with a variety of items at today's meeting, including whether to provide transportation to all rising sixth- and ninth-graders going to their feeder schools this fall.

During the work session, staff will give an update on how many of the preassigned students still don't have transportation and what can be done to accommodate them. The vote on the issue, requested by board member Jim Martin, will come at the regular meeting.

In response to board member Debra Goldman's complaints that Martin was being given more consideration than her for today's meeting, the board will also deal with her concerns about board and district transparency.

Should the Wake County school system guarantee bus service to all students who choose to stay on their current feeder pattern?

It's an issue in the new student assignment that the school board has been wrestling with for the past several months. The discussion got personal at times last week with board member Jim Martin, the most outspoken proponent of providing the bus service, taking shots from board members Debra Goldman and Deborah Prickett.

For now, staff is continuing to review what bus service can be provided.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

You may not actually live in the walk zone after all for the Wake County school you're now in or hope to attend.

As noted in today's article, Wake is using different mapping data for student assignment that what's currently used by transportation, Chief Transformation Officer Judy Peppler says they're using the most up-to-date data to determine how far students live from a school in the student assignment plan.

The new data means that some students who thought they'd get the walk-zone priority in the assignment plan are not now. That's a big deal because families who live within the 1.5-mile walk zone had a lot more success getting into a school than other applicants.

The spin from both supporters and critics of Wake County's new student assignment plan is well in progress.

As noted in today's article, critics like the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and some parents dispute Superintendent Tony Tata's assertions that the first round of the selection process was a success.

But Michael Alves, who is being paid by Wake to consult on the plan's implementation, and Wake Education Partnership Vice President Tim Simmons say the results are encouraging.

Burgetta Wheeler is ringing the "alarm bells" about the new student assignment plan.

In her column today, Wheeler charges that "we seem to have skipped a few of those steps on our way to implementing the nearly incomprehensible Wake County schools assignment plan." She writes that parents are "becoming frightfully aware of some of those emerging weaknesses, costs and consequences" of the plan.

Wheeler points to the decline in magnet applications that she attributes to families no longer being able to return to base. She writes that the new feeder patterns are restricting choice for families who want to leave their feeder, are newcomers or who are leaving charter schools.

"March 16 is the day parents who have ranked choices will find out where their children have been assigned," Wheeler writes. "The casualty count and collateral damage could be considerable."

Parents of 1,191 Wake County students have to reselect which middle schools they want their children to attend this fall because of a computer glitch on the school system’s computer system.

The school system sent out email messages to the affected families over the weekend letting them know that an update to the computer software had erased their middle school choices. The families have until 10 p.m. on Feb. 24 to reselect their choices.

The problem affects parents of students choosing middle schools that feed into multiple high schools. Under the new assignment plan, families wanting to attend middle schools with split feeder patterns can choose which high school pathway they wanted to attend.

Prior to Friday, Wake didn’t let families applying to middle schools with split feeder patterns to choose the high school pathway they wanted. Wake updated the software on Friday to correct the problem, but the resulting change reset the middle school selections for the affected families who had submitted their applications before that date.

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."

As part of today's article on Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's one-year anniversary on the job, he sat with the N&O for an extensive interview.

Here are some highlights from the interview, which touched on a variety of topics, including student assignment, the budget and how Tata evaluates his job performance.

The big topic of the moment is the implementation of the new student assignment plan. Tata was asked about the complaints from parents of charter school and magnet school students than the rules have changed on them since they can't just go to a base school now.