Can the Wake County school system sell the public on the merits of the bell schedule changes for this fall?

As noted in today's article, school staff said the proposal would help Wake avoid $10 million in costs and revenue losses this fall. But school board members said it would take community outreach to explain it to parents why they're being asked to make changes of more than an hour in some cases.

"If we don't (do community outreach), we’re going to get thousands of calls and emails about this," said school board member John Tedesco.

UPDATE

Click here for the handout from the board meeting. It lists the proposed bell schedules.

Wake has fixed some errors with the individual school times from yesterday's handout. I've replaced the link with the new one. Wake made more corrections Thursday.

The three new Democratic Wake County school board members all said tonight they're still planning on making changes to the new student assignment plan.

“I want the public to know that it is my intention and that of several other board members to monitor the data as it comes in,” said new Democratic board member Susan Evans. “We will respond to things that we feel warrant immediate response.”

Evans, speaking during the board comment section of the meeting, expressed frustration that they ran out of time to discuss the assignment plan during the work session.

Could the Wake County school board decide after all to implement for this fall seat set-asides at the high-performing schools or lift the priority for students from low-performing nodes?

Both topics are part of the student assignment update that will be presented at the work session. Topics, according to the handout, include assignment priorities for displaced magnet students and the number of AG students accepted into sixth-grade at Ligon and Carnage middle schools.  

Also on the agenda, is a staff presentation to change the bell schedules for nearly all of the schools this fall.

UPDATE

The school board ran out of time to discuss the student assignment update.

Click here for the online story about the bell schedule proposal.

The Wake County school board has a lot crammed on its agenda today, including student assignment, school bus routing, the math placement policy and selling the Noble Road property.

That doesn't include the other items that may crop op, such as revisiting the mediation issue with the school board protesters and extending Superintendent Tony Tata's contract.

Let's start with the work session agenda, where we'll see if the new Democratic board majority heeds calls from its supporters to change the student assignment plan. Staff will give an update on the plan.

Michael Alves stands to get hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Wake County school system for his help implementing the new controlled-choice student assignment plan.

The school board will vote today on this contract to pay the Alves Educational Consulting Group up to $110,000 for the rest of the fiscal year. The contract pays Alves' firm for services in support of implementation of the assignment plan and the continued utilization of his proprietary "Controlled Choice" software system.

The contract expires June 30. But the contract also contains wording that it's expected to be renewed and in effect for at least the next three years.

UPDATE

The contract was approved 6-3. Jim Martin voted no. I'm not sure who else did.

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

Much of today's press conference from Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata was about his first year on the job and whether he's worried about his future given the change in the school board's majority.

That's been covered in other blog posts and stories so I'll focus on what Tata said today are plans to "transform" school transportation. It will be presented to the school board next Tuesday.

Tata didn't give any details today, saying that he wanted to discuss it with the school board first.

Tata said it won't affect the assignment plan for the upcoming school year, pointing to how families will get transportation to their choices. But in the absence of any details, it's uncertain what that would mean.

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.