The Wake County school board's policy committee will tackle today enrollment capping and the way the board operates.

The capping policy has been meant to apply to schools for the foliating school year. Since the caps proposed in the draft 2013-14 assignment plan would affect schools for this school year, some revisions might be needed.

The committee will also discuss the policy on the rules of order that govern board meetings.

The committee will also discuss the policy on the duties of officers, namely the board chair and vice chair. The discussion comes a week before the board's annual organization meeting when officers will be selected for the next year.

UPDATE

Click here to view the proposed revision to the capping policy. It would incorporate wording on the use of partial and full caps.

Click here to view the proposed revision on the duties of board officers. It would formalize into the policy the practice that's been followed the past year that allows the board chair to vote  on all issues. The board chair has been voting on everything, and not just to break ties, since the General Assembly made it possible last year.

Click here to view the proposed revision on the rules of order. It drops the wording that the board chair can only vote to break ties. It also formalizes the practice that's been taking place of board members making comments at the start of the meeting.

Does the Wake County school system need to have a policy for how law enforcement interviews and arrests students on campus?

The school board was scheduled to vote on giving this new policy approval on first reading on Oct. 30 until board member Jim Martin interceded. As a result, the policy was tabled for up to 90 days for further review by the policy committee.

Martin, chairman of the policy committee, had given the policy his approval at the Sept. 25 committee meeting. But he raised concerns after getting in contact with Jason Langberg, an attorney for Advocates for Children's Services, which works with students who are suspended and who are arrested.

The Wake County school system's website is set to get a makeover this weekend.

If all goes as planned, the revamped website will go live Sunday. It's more visually appealing than the current website. It's also supposed to make it easier for users to find information.

The changes were impressive enough that school board member Debra Goldman joined the rest of the policy committee Tuesday in agreeing to hold off on acting on the transparency policy she's backed. Goldman said the web redesign accomplishes much of what she hoped about making it easier for people to find things online.

The Wake County school system is telling AdvancED that it's on its way toward completing all seven of the action steps requested by the accrediting organization.

When AdvancED raised the accreditation of the high schools in January to advised status, Wake still had two of the seven steps to complete. In this new update released this morning, Wake says it's completed one of those action steps and will soon get the other one done.

Wake is pointing to the board passing the strategic plan in August and the policy committee recommending passage of a policy on defining the role of resolutions.

Wake's update doesn't get into the complaint filed by the Wake County Taxpayers Association over the firing of Superintendent Tony Tata since that response isn't required until Dec. 18. The update also doesn't get into the recent controversy involving school board members Debra Goldman and Chris Malone.

We'll find out today how the Wake County school system says it's doing addressing the concerns raised by AdvancED.

Today is the deadline for Wake to give an update from when AdvancED upgraded the status of the district's high schools to accreditation warned in January. School leaders are hoping that they can regain full accreditation for the high schools.

What you won't see today is Wake's response to the complaint that the Wake County Taxpayers Association lodged about the Democratic school board majority and the firing of Superintendent Tony Tata. Wake has until Nov. 15 to respond to those issues.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION

Wake says it has until Dec. 18 now to respond to the WCTA allegations.

As of 7 p.m. (Thursday), the report isn't in yet (to the media). Wake says the report was sent to AdvancED at 4:52 p.m. Thursday to meet the deadline

Will Wake County school board members Debra Goldman and Chris Malone show up at Tuesday's board meeting to be bombarded by the media with questions about the recently unveiled revelations from a 2010 police report?

What could make the issue more interesting is that the school board's policy committee, where Goldman is the vice chairwoman, is set to meet before the full board's work session. On Tuesday's policy committee agenda is the proposed transparency policy that Goldman introduced.

Goldman has on multiple occasions complained that the full board and policy committee haven't been discussing the transparency policy. Goldman has argued the school system needs to be more transparent in how it provides information to the public.

If Goldman comes to Tuesday's meeting, it's likely someone will compare the transparency she's advocating for in policy with how she's handled the allegations raised in the police report. Goldman said in a Monday statement that she considers the matters from the 2010 police report to be "closed."

UPDATE

The post was written before Goldman agreed to an interview on Saturday. Click here for the article in Sunday's newspaper with Goldman's remarks.

Aside from round two of efforts to fire Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata, you'll also have today the first official effort by the school board's new Democratic majority to modify the student assignment policy.

As noted in this earlier post, the school board's policy committee will go over revisions to the student assignment policy, the school transfer policy and the school capping policy. Expect a lot of discussion on whether staff's proposed wording on adding achievement back into the policy goes far enough or if the more detailed wording suggested by committee chair Jim Martin is preferred..

One of the questions is how quickly the committee will move to adopt any policy revisions to send to the full board. Normally the committee is two majority members and two minority members, but ex-officio members Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton can vote to ensure a favorable policy recommendation.

While the minority members will likely want to slow the pace down, the majority members are under a relatively timeframe as they need to get the policies passed before they can adopt the new assignment plan.

This week marks what could be a potentially major week in the history of Wake County student assignment.

As noted in today's article, the school board's policy committee will meet Tuesday to begin discussion of rewriting the student assignment policy to reintroduce diversity as one of the components. On Saturday, the school board will go over the 2013-14 draft student assignment plan that could potentially be rewritten to reflect the diversity changes.

One of the questions the school board will face is how to word the diversity component in the assignment policy. Should it be a general statement, as proposed by staff, or a more explicit document that would have a variety of income and achievement targets?

Next week's Wake County school board schedule is now out and the first work session on the student assignment plan is set for Sept. 29, a Saturday.

After postponing the five public hearings scheduled for the plan, the board  looked at using those dates as work sessions. The posted schedule doesn't mention reusing the Monday and Wednesday that would have held hearings.

But a work session is scheduled for Sept. 29 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the school board conference room, 5625 Dillard Drive in Cary.

Also next week, the school board's policy committee will meet Tuesday to discuss revisions to the policies on student assignment, transfers and enrollment caps. The board needs to adopt the revisions before the plan can be approved.

The Wake County school board has put on hold the public hearings on the student assignment plan.

The decision was made tonight after a heated debate over whether to release the assignment maps and online address lookup of base assignments before the first hearing on Monday. Republican board members said the info should be released ahead of time while Democratic board members said doing so wouldn't help because comments would focus on individual assignments and not on the plan as a whole.

Democratic members said that they want to release the maps to parents to get input on that too, but not right now. The hearings will be rescheduled.

Board members from both sides did agree that a proposed Oct. 30 vote on the plan was too soon.

UPDATE

Board members said it would be rushing to hold the hearings next week when there's not enough detail on the plan.

In addition, don't look for the online address lookup feature to be up Friday.

One of the issues raised by Jonathan Blumberg, acting as board attorney tonight, is that the board needs to make the changes to the various policies before the new plan can be adopted.  The board would need to make changes in the student assignment policy and the transfer policy.

Depending on how quickly they want to act, the next policy commitee meeting is on Tuesday, Sept. 25.