It looks like we haven't seen the last of former Wake County school board member Debra Goldman.

It's not officially on the meeting agenda, but the school board is planning to recognize Goldman today for her three years of board service. Goldman may be present at the meeting to receive the recognition.

Goldman officially resigned on Feb. 1. Her plan, before it became known that she could no longer serve after she changed her voter registration to Wilkes County, was to announce her resignation at the Feb. 5 board meeting.

How does the idea sound of having a mass election for all Wake County school board seats in 2014?

As noted in today's article, state Rep. Chris Malone said legislators are considering various options for changing the way Wake school board members are elected in response to the request from the board of commissioners.

Ideas on the table include making some or all the seats at-large and changing the elections to even-numbered years. One of the more intriguing ideas would involve extending by a year the board members elected in 2009 and shortening by a year those elected in 2011.

There's apparently enough justification in the charges leveled by the Wake County Taxpayers Association to keep the Wake County school system's high school from regaining full accreditation.

As noted in today's article, Mark Elgart, president of AdvancED, said that they haven't officially made a determination as to whether the WCTA complaint is valid. However, he said, if the agency had already found it to be invalid it would have given Wake’s high schools full accreditation.

“We’re not picking sides in the complaint,” Elgart said. “But there’s clearly a lack of confidence in the community.”

The application period is now open for people who want to fill the District 9 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

School officials announced today that they'll take applications through Feb. 22 from people who want to replace Debra Goldman. The new board member would finish Goldman's term, which runs through November, and would have the advantage of incumbency in this fall's school board election.

The school board will schedule interviews with applicants with a vote expected to occur in March. This could give the board's Democratic majority a 7-2 edge.

Wake County Board of Commissioners Chairman Joe Bryan and county manager David Cooke met with the editorial board and some newsroom folks today to chat about things. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the county’s relationship with the school board was the subject that took up most of our time.

Here are my notes of the meeting. They are NOT verbatim.

Here's a recap of the interviews of Wade Minter and Shinica Thomas for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Minter found multiple ways to bring up his support for Wake's old socioeconomic diversity policy even when he wasn't asked questions on topics that touched on the subject.

The first reference was on how Minter wold meet the needs of all students a at a time of limited resources. He said that the diversity policy is a good one that helps parents who don't have as much time to work with their children or the means to provide resources to their kids.

Prospective Wake County school board applicants were grilled today on a range of topics, such as their views on magnet schools, student assignment, the superintendent search and the challenges facing Eastern Wake County.

Each board member asked the same question to the applicants. They asked the question from Debra Goldman as well, even though she resigned Friday.

Here were the eight questions:

Here's a recap of the interviews of Tom Benton and Don Mial for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Benton was the most direct and explicit of all the applicants so far on his views on diversity, student assignment and magnet schools. His familiarity with those issues from having spent most of his 32 years in education in Wake showed.

Benton said he supported using student assignment to promote diverse schools and also supports the magnet school program. But at the same time he said they need to balance the concerns from parents about reassignment, including low-income students who are being moved.

Here's a recap of the interviews from Wendy Ford and Hilda McCullers for the District 1 vacancy on the Wake County school board.

Ford repeatedly stressed that she knew what the board was going through having served on a school board in upstate New York for 19 years. She said she's done everything the board now faces, including being involved in two superintendent searches.

Another thing that Ford frequently mentioned is that Wake needs to deal with competition from the popularity of charter schools, especially parents who are dissatisfied with the district.

Here are some of the highlights so far from the first group of interviews from Wake County school board applicants for the District 1 vacancy.

David Menaker acknowledged that he was talking himself out of the job by criticizing magnet schools. He said it's "absurd" that you have magnet schools at the elementary school level with all the options for children so young.

Menaker said the district does too much to perpetuate competition among schools, citing magnets as an example, instead of trying to make all schools fundamentally desirable.