Wake County school board member Keith Sutton wants the school district to begin setting priorities for things to protect in the face of next year's budget crunch.

Sutton got the process started at last week's finance committee meeting, where he proposed ideas such as protecting pre-K funding, providing enough funding for alternative schools and improving the academic performance for African American male students.

Sutton said he's hoping the full school board will have a similar discussion on the issue.

Wake's reluctance to extensively use federal stimulus money to save existing jobs is drawing fire from the N.C. Association of Educators and Gov. Beverly Perdue.

As noted in today's article, Wake school leaders complained that the state's discretionary cuts are not really so discretionary after all, leading to larger class sizes and fewer teaching positions this fall. They also are saying they're reluctant to rely too much on stimulus money that's scheduled to go away after two years.

But NCAE and Perdue, which both backed the budget deal and argued that stimulus money could be a lifesaver for school jobs, aren't happy with Wake's response.

UPDATED END OF POST TO INCLUDE LINKS TO PERDUE'S BUDGET ORDER, WHERE WAKE IS MAKING THE CUTS AND HOW IT'S SPENDING THE STIMULUS MONEY.

Stimulus money and differentiated teacher pay dominated today's finance committee meeting.

School board members heard about how the district will use $31 million in stimulus money. The feds are requiring the money to be used for Title I and special education.

Staff says it will save or create at least 97 jobs.