It looks like there's still a solid majority on the Wake County school board to implement the new single-gender leadership academies for next school year.

As noted in today's article, school board member Keith Sutton said he still strongly backs the new schools even though several groups, including the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, raised concerns in a Thursday memo. So even with the new members being sworn in Tuesday, Sutton and the four Republicans who voted yes in October should be enough to keep it moving.

Sutton is such a strong backer that he and Superintendent Tony Tata were in Chicago on Friday to visit the Urban Prep Academy, a male single-gender school that has seen phenomenal success.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

A coalition of liberal groups is urging the Wake County school system to halt plans to open a pair of single-sex leadership academies next year.

In this memorandum sent Thursday to Wake Superintendent Tony Tata and school board members, the groups argue that approval of the academies was rushed through without enough input or review. The groups also oppose having single-sex schools and the requirement that students at the academies participate in the Junior ROTC program.

“Instead of spending precious funds on the proposed single-sex academies, spend them on improving and expanding alternative educational programs for struggling students,” says the memo.

The memo was signed by the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, Advocates for Children’s Services, the YWCA of the Greater Triangle, the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children, the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU and CHOICES — a group that’s criticized JROTC programs.

Cash Michaels is speculating on Debra Goldman becoming the new Wake County school board vice chairwoman and lists three actions that he says the new Democratic majority must do.

In this week's issue of The Carolinian, Michaels writes that the new majority must revise the student assignment plan "to ensure that no more high poverty schools are created, and that low performing students have access to high performing schools." He also says the new majority will "also have to prioritize the removal of several acts by the current GOP board."

"First, they must cancel any contract the board has with the conservative Civitas Institute, the right-wing think tank funded by conservative activist Art Pope that was hired to train new Wake School Board members," Michaels writes. "Their services are clearly not needed now."

Wake County school board member Kevin Hill and challenger Heather Losurdo got into some spirited discussions during their joint appearance on WRAL's "On the Record" show.

The discussion opened with Losurdo saying her resume is "contextually accurate." She said she was offended that people would say that someone like her with her military background and organizational and communications skills couldn't do the job of overseeing $2 billion in small business loans.

The topic then moved to the recently adopted student assignment plan.

Here are a few more tidbits from today's press conference with Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata.

Tata said he's been reviewing capacity figures and thinks they can handle the requests from families who don't like the new feeder patterns. He said one thing they're still reviewing is the transitional capacity figures for schools.

“I feel like that where we have some of these points of concern that the parents that are proximate and feel that their feeder pattern may take them away, there is enough space for the numbers of students that want to get into their more proximate school,” Tata said. “Now will that happen in every case? We don’t know.”

Wake County's two new single-gender leadership academies are undergoing some changes before they open the doors for the 2012-13 school year.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, Wake is now looking at partnering with Peace University to house both schools on their campus. The earlier plan was to have the male academy at the Longview School site and the female school at Raleigh Charter High's former space at Pilot Mill.

Wake will now only require that ninth-graders take Junior ROTC instead of having all grades in the program.

Wake County school leaders have hired a new area superintendent and named the person who will lead a new single-sex school for male students.

On Tuesday, the school board hired Kevin Hobbs to fill the vacant position of Area Superintendent for Central Wake, covering a number of Raleigh schools in and around the Beltline. Hobbs has been the assistant superintendent for leadership and development in the Houston Independent School District since 2010.

Although Hobbs spent much of his career working in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, he was a teacher at Garner High School from 1993 to 1995. His salary will be $120,000 a year.

UPDATED TO INCLUDE HOBBS' SALARY

The Wake County school board moved one high school principal to Central Office this evening and transferred another principal to a different school.

John Williams, the principal of Middle Creek High School in Cary, was appointed senior director for high school education. The job became open after Ruth Steidinger switched to being senior director for middle school education.

Williams opened Middle Creek in 2001 and will leave the school on Nov. 1. Thomas Dixon will serve as interim principal at Middle Creek, Dixon, the former longtime principal of Apex High School, will receive a salary that's equivalent to $131,580 a year.

It's now in the hands of the Wake County Board of Commissioners to decide on reallocating unspent 2006 bond money to help fund the $130.3 million school construction program recently approved by the school board.

The commissioners are being asked today to approve in concept the plan that would fund projects such as a new high school in Apex, a new elementary school in Wake Forest, two single-sex leadership academies, the Hilburn K-8 conversion, off-campus ninth-grade centers for Panther Creek and Garner high schools and modulars at several other high schools.

Critics of the school board majority focused most of their complaints on the leadership academies, the Hilburn project and the Panther Creek ninth-grade center. In the case of Panther Creek, school officials say the ninth-grade center is needed to deal with crowding while critics complained a relatively new school was getting more money while older ones like Apex High were not.

Today's vote is for first reading only. The meeting starts at 2 p.m. in the  Wake County Courthouse, Room 700.

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition may not officially be endorsing any Wake County school board candidates, but it's arguably come out with a last-minute attempt to try to sway voters.

In a press release today, GSIW contends that the school board majority has wasted taxpayers $113.5 million since December 2009. How much of the items on this GSIW list would be considered waste could be debated.

“For almost two years, the Board majority has exhibited a lack of fiscal responsibility to taxpayers with ill-conceived, hastily made decisions,” said GSIW chairwoman Yevonne Brannon in the press release. "“When items are brought up for discussion by Board minority members who have repeatedly asked for supporting data, their reasonable requests are dismissed and multi-million dollar decisions are made without proper research, discussion of options, or the appropriate cost analysis.”