The Wake County school board agreed to one change in the draft strategic plan this afternoon while having some heated discussions on other areas.

They board agreed to modify the vision section of the plan to add in the words that students will "be accountable partners" in their education. it was added after board member Jim Martin said that students need to have some responsibility in the issue.

I'll get into more on the other issues later, but the board disagreed about whether to leave in the draft strategic plan the use of teacher merit pay and the expansion of academies. Board members also disagreed on the significance of the rest of the state catching up to Wake's graduation rate.

The board is taking a lunch break before resuming discussion at 2:45 p.m. on board-superintendent communications.

UPDATE

Staff will bring back the revised core mission, vision and beliefs to the June 5 regular meeting for a vote.

The full strategic plan will be pulled from the June 5 action meeting. School board chairman Kevin Hill said individual members or groups of two can meet with Chief of Staff/Chief Transformation Officer Judy Peppler to go over any suggested wording changes before discussing at the June 5 work session.

There's a heated argument about what position the leadership of the African American community should take about Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh.

A message posted on the Coalition for Concerned Citizens for African American Children's listserv questions why school board vice chairman Keith Sutton and some other black leaders "support the opening of Walnut Creek, a segregated school." The writer also criticizes the recent school board decision to offer signing bonuses and performance pay for the school's staff.

It's unclear who's the author of the message. The person forwarded it to CCCAAC President Calla Wright for her to post on the listserv.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR CCCAAC'S RESPONSE TO DAN COLEMAN

The Wake County school board approved today offering bonus pay to teachers and other staff at Walnut Creek Elementary School and the Longview School.

Starting in the 2012-13 school year, grant money will be used to offer to staff signing bonuses and bonuses based on student performance. A similar merit pay program, also using grant money, is offered at four Wake elementary schools.

Walnut Creek is getting the program because it's a high-poverty school in Southeast Raleigh. But unlike the Longview School, an alternative school in East Raleigh, Walnut Creek's staff won't have to reapply to keep their jobs at the school.

The vote for Longview was 8-1 with only board member Jim Martin, a critic of bonus pay programs, voting no. Board member Susan Evans joined Martin in opposition to the 7-2 vote for starting the program at Walnut Creek.

Budgets and student assignment headline a long list of items on today's Wake County school board agenda.

 As noted in today's article, during the work session, staff will present recommended changes to the assignment plan based on the results of the first round of the choice selection process. The board has scheduled a vote on changes for the regular meeting.

Chief Transformation Officer Judy Peppler previously told the board they may recommend adjustments in four areas: whether seat set-asides should be allocated for some or all of the high-performing schools, the percentage of magnet vs. base students at some schools, options for students whose feeder doesn't include transportation and sibling priority in grades 1-5, 7-8 and 10-12.

Wake County school administrators want to offer signing bonuses and performance pay to teachers at Walnut Creek Elementary School and the Longview School.

The school board will vote Tuesday on using $442,000 from the Race to the Top grant for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to start Walnut Creek's bonus plan. The new plan would help Walnut Creek "be able to hire and retain the most capable staff members in all positions."

Some critics had argued it was unfair to offer the bonuses at the four Renaissance Schools but not at Walnut Creek when they have similar demographics.

The board will also vote on using $425,000 from a School Improvement Grant to fund the bonus plan at Longview for the next two school years. The plan calls for Longview, which is an alternative school, to "reconstruct" its staff, meaning some current teachers might not return to the school in the fall.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata found himself being challenged Saturday by the new school board members on his idea of giving school autonomy based on student achievement.

Tata supports using what's called "managed performance empowerment," a hybrid between giving principals no control and total control over how they run their schools. It's part of his draft strategic plan that he's hoping the board will adopt.

"Called Managed Performance Empowerment (MPE), the theory of action grants flexibility and decision-making authority to schools based on successful performance," says Tata's draft strategic plan. "From a school support perspective, we will measure our school performance based first and foremost on student achievement and place schools along a continuum of performance to best target our support and resources as a district."

Civitas Action is using the issue of teacher merit pay/performance pay to try to get voters to back Wake County school board candidates Heather Losurdo, Ron Margiotta, and Donna Williams.

In these mailers sent last week, the conservative action arm of the Civitas Institute says the three GOP candidates have "a plan for our best teachers. Support excellence!"

"Donna Williams knows that the best way to retain and attract the best teachers is to reward them for their contributions to the educational development of our children," says the mailer. "Donna believes we need to compensate the best teachers at a higher rate so we can keep them in the classroom."

Eyes around Wake County are focused on how the four Renaissance Model  schools will do this year.

As noted in today's article, the four Renaissance schools got additional resources, such as the money that was used to have a quartet from the N.C. Symphony work with students at Barwell Road Elementary School on Monday.

“We want to focus on everything we can to bring enrichment to their lives," said Barwell Road Principal Sandy Barefoot. “It certainly opens up the world to them.”

Wake County school board candidate Donna Williams probably isn't going to win over Enloe High School supporters based on her talk of spreading programs around.

Williams hit the local conservative radio talk show circuit this week starting as a guest co-host Tuesday on The Morning Show on WRDU. She touched on Enloe during an interview Wednesday on The Rick and Donna Martinez Show on WPTF, where she also said it's not a case of the school system needing more money to raise achievement.

"I believe we need a more fair and equitable balance in our schools," Williams said on WPTF. "I'll give you an example. Enloe High School right now has 142 magnet programs in that one school. And then we have a lot of schools in this county that have zero. I just think we need to take a look at that and if we balanced it out a lot better, it would then affect and help all of our children."

UPDATE I will now be back on Wednesday.

For some practical reasons, Wake County isn't close to implementing a districtwide pay-for-performance model for teachers.

Wake Superintendent Tony Tata laid out the limitations for districtwide teacher merit pay at last month's school board retreat. Tata said the problem is that EVAAS, which is being used to evaluate teachers statewide, only covers 19 percent of Wake's teachers.

"It's really an insufficient tool for us to evaluate the performance of our teachers," Tata said of EVAAS. "That doesn't mean it can't be made to be a sufficient tool, but if we are looking at,,,moving to some kind of pay for performance model, perhaps in the future, we either need to enhance EVAAS so that it captures all our teachers or we need another method to do this."