The draft summary of Wake County's new student assignment plan seems to promise a lot of things to different people.

As noted in today's article, the plan promotes proximity by noting that "base assignments will be made at one of their proximate schools to the extent possible." It also says that "residential areas and subdivisions proximate to schools and representative of the students already attending the schools" were used.

For those concerned about diversity, administrators say "in the establishment of the base school attendance area, student performance data was used when an overcrowded or under enrolled school was adjusted."

More to come later, but a few more details are emerging about Wake County's new draft student assignment plan.

An outline of the plan presented to board members shows that attendance lines were drawn for the 2013-14 school year so that "base assignments will be made at one of their proximate schools to the extent possible."

Staff says that when drawing up attendance lines they took into account student achievement to make schools representative of the students now attending. Schools that are 10 percentage points below the district's average performance composite would get additional resources.

UPDATE

Click here for the online story.

For those who don't want to wait until Tuesday morning, click here for a summary of the plan that was provided to school board members.

This email from Yevonne Brannon, chairwoman of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, offers a perspective of what critics of Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata and the Republican school board members say behind the scenes.

In the Aug. 18 email message, Brannon says Tata is taunting and bullying people when he says they need to "cowboy up" to pass a school bond issue next year. She says many people don't approve of Tata's work and feel that he's helped resegregate the schools.

"Many, many people in the minority community, the economic developers in the business community, the progressive and social justice community members, the advocates for the disabled and underrepresented children, advocates for our teachers and staff, and those who regard public education as a right for all children together add to a large group that does not trust Mr. Tata," Brannon writes.

UPDATE

To make it clearer, the email was not forwarded to me by Brannon. I obtained a copy of the email from another person and posted it, as I mentioned in the post, as an example of the things that are said privately about Tata and the board members.

Wake County school administrators could face a lot of questions about whether the new student assignment plan being unveiled Tuesday does enough to balance schools by student achievement.

As noted in today's article, the versions of the new plan that school board members saw as it was being developed is producing some vastly conflicting reactions. How that shapes what the final plan looks like remains to be seen.

For instance, school board member John Tedesco said it looks to be a workable hybrid of the old assignment plan and the choice plan. He praised the new plan’s strong focus on proximity and its provision for families to apply to multiple schools in their areas.

The Wake County school system announced today five public hearings that will be held in conjunction with next week’s release of the proposed 2013-14 student assignment plan.

School administrators will present the new plan at Tuesday’s board meeting, which begins at 5:30 p.m. at 5625 Dillard Drive in Cary. The new plan is based on the directive passed in June by the school board calling for Wake to go back to assigning each address to a specific school in lieu of the choice plan used this school year.

The school board will spend several weeks receiving public comments before a scheduled vote on the final plan in late October.

How did the Wake County school bus situation get so bad during the first two weeks of the traditional-calendar school year?

As noted in today's article, a combination of factors led to the problems that caused buses to come late or not all and generated a daily stream of media reports. It ultimately stems back to a desire to save money that led to the adoption of unrealistic bus routes that Wake has tried to remedy by putting back 41 of the 52 buses it had removed from service.

"We focused too much on becoming efficient, getting the right number of kids on the bus up, trying to squeeze too many stops too great a distance, particularly in those instances where we’ve got three tiers: one, two, three schools in a row," Don Haydon, Wake's chief facilities and operations officer told school board members last week.

There were plenty of apologies and recriminations coming from Wake County school board members on Tuesday over the bus problems.

As noted in today's article, Superintendent Tony Tata and board members apologized to parents and students for the problems last week. But also amid the apologies, the new Democratic board members worked to distance themselves from the problems, blaming staff for telling them they could implement the new transportation plan.

In addition, the choice plan was also a target of the new Democratic board members.

More to come later, but Wake County school board members and Superintendent Tony Tata offered apologies tonight for the way bus service operated last week and the long registration lines at Central Office.

Words like "dismal," "unacceptable" and "failure" were used to describe the bus service last week. Board members Christine Kushner and Jim Martin called for an independent audit of the transportation department.

Along with the apologies, the new Democratic school board members blamed the bus and registration problems on the choice plan and changes made in student assignment by the former GOP majority. This drew a sharp response from the Republican board members.

How will the Wake County school board, in practice, balance the competing goals in the student assignment directive of proving stability, proximity and diversity?

School board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin provided some insight of how they'll approach the assignment issue during the Aug. 21 board work session on the federal magnet school grant. The issue was over staff not recommending magnetizing Barwell Road, Creech Road and Hodge Road elementary schools because it would result in reassigning out part of their enrollments and having a negative impact on minority isolation at surrounding schools.

Some board members gave different reasons for questioning whether that concern should keep the schools from being magnetized.

The UNC School of Law's Center for Civil Rights is blaming this week's Wake County school transportation problems on the elimination of the diversity policy.

In a blog post today, Elizabeth Haddix of the CCR, calls the past week of school "an overwhelming fiasco." It's not a surprising statement from her considering that the group is providing legal assistance to the NAACP in the ongoing federal civil rights complaint against Wake for eliminating the use of socioeconomic diversity.

"Despite the administration’s repeated protestations to the contrary, the root of the school opening debacle is the school board’s insistence on adopting a student assignment plan so focused on eliminating diversity that other important values were eliminated too: transparency, community engagement, attention to legitimate public concerns, and efficient resource management," Haddix writes.