The Wake County school system announced Thursday that 25 magnet schools have received national awards.

Douglas, Farmington Woods, Smith and Wiley elementary schools; Ligon Middle; and Enloe, Millbrook and Southeast Raleigh high schools received the School of Excellence Award from Magnet Schools of America, a trade organization. Those eight schools are now in the running to win the Simpson Distinguished Merit Award, which goes to the top magnet school in the nation.

Seventeen Wake schools received a School of Distinction award.

The Wake County school board passed the voluntary desegregation resolution it needs as part of it federal magnet grant application, but in the process it led to a discussion about achievement at magnets and the programming options at non-magnets.

At the last meeting on Feb. 5, the board considered this voluntary desegregation resolution. Approval was required as part of the $10 million in federal magnet dollars Wake will request to start up three new magnets and to revamp the themes at two schools.

School board member Deborah Prickett came to the discussion with a long list of notes to raise her concerns about approving the resolution.

It's not an understatement to say that Thursday's Wake County school board discussion on the student assignment policy was a free-wheeling discussion.

The variety of topics discussed, such as how explicit to make an achievement goal and what to say about socioeconomic diversity, set the stage for the long process to follow to come up with a revised policy.

Unlike most committee meetings, nearly every board member including new appointee Tom Benton attended. That's a sign of how important the discussion was viewed.

Wake County families can now go online to find out if they've been accepted into a magnet school, early college or single-sex leadership academy for the 2013-14 school year.

Families can click on this link to log into their online account to check their application results. If you were accepted, you'll now be assigned to that new school and will lose your spot at your former school and won't be able to decline the seat.

If you weren't accepted, you will be placed on a waiting list.

Here's a recap of the interviews of Wade Minter and Shinica Thomas for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Minter found multiple ways to bring up his support for Wake's old socioeconomic diversity policy even when he wasn't asked questions on topics that touched on the subject.

The first reference was on how Minter wold meet the needs of all students a at a time of limited resources. He said that the diversity policy is a good one that helps parents who don't have as much time to work with their children or the means to provide resources to their kids.

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.

Here are some of the highlights so far from the first group of interviews from Wake County school board applicants for the District 1 vacancy.

David Menaker acknowledged that he was talking himself out of the job by criticizing magnet schools. He said it's "absurd" that you have magnet schools at the elementary school level with all the options for children so young.

Menaker said the district does too much to perpetuate competition among schools, citing magnets as an example, instead of trying to make all schools fundamentally desirable.

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.