Pencil in Dec. 4 for what could be a lively discussion about whether the Wake County school system should hold early release days on Wednesday or Fridays.

As noted in today's article, the school board's executive committee has put the early release issue on the agenda for the Dec. 4 board work session. The board's Democratic majority has the votes to push through a change but whether they want to risk any appearance of a scaled-back return to Wacky Wednesdays/Wake Wednesdays remains to be seen.

Aside from the argument from supporters that Wednesdays would be better for promoting student achievement, you're also likely to hear that they're only talking about six Wednesdays per student and not every week.

It looks like the Wake County school system may soon hire an outside firm to conduct a review of the district's Academically and Intellectually Gifted (AIG) program.

During last week's school board student achievement committee meeting, staff reviewed different options for how to conduct the review that would help influence revisions that may be made to the AIG program. Click here on this handout.

One option would be to have the state Department of Public Instruction perform the review, possibly during the spring.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Should the Wake County school system go back to holding early release days or Wednesdays or continue to hold them on Fridays?

It's an argument that's been batted around the last few years with many families preferring to hold the six annual early release days on Fridays while many teachers would rather they be held on Wednesdays. For the last few years, the Republican board majority had opted for using Fridays.

But with a new Democratic board majority, it could be on Wednesdays for the 2013-14 school year. Some of those board members voiced support during Thursday's student achievement committee meeting for using Wednesdays.

I'll go into more detail on the individual items later, but here's an abbreviated summary of today's meeting of the Wake County school board's student achievement committee.

Staff is looking to hire a company to do a review of the district's academically and intellectually gifted (AIG) program. It's likely to be done by the same company that will do the curriculum audits of the four Eastern Wake schools.

Staff gave an update on the new common exams that will be used statewide to evaluate teachers in the non end-of-grade and end-of-course subjects. A repeated theme during the discussion was board member Jim Martin's complaints about the level of testing this would entail.

School start times and the academically and intellectually gifted program are among the items on today's agenda for the Wake County school board's student achievement committee.

The committee will get an update on the group that was formed to study school start times. Among the things that group is looking at is flipping the bell schedule to start elementary schools earlier so high schools could start later.

Staff will discuss a review of the district's AIG program.

Other topics include an update on measures of student learning/common exams/new assessments and proposed 2013-14 early release dates.

The Wake County school system is taking some more steps to address the concerns raised by Eastern Wake residents that not enough is being done to help schools in their area.

As noted in this article Wednesday in the Eastern Wake News, the school system will conduct curriculum audits at Hodge Road Elementary, Knightdale Elementary, East Wake Middle and Knightdale High School. The audits, which Wake will hire an outside company to perform, would cost between $15,000 to $20,000 per school.

These audits were proposed by Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore at the Oct. 11 meeting of the school board's student achievement committee.

Wake County's three new magnet schools and two revamped magnet schools will look to make a splash with parents for the 2013-14 school year.

As noted in today's article, staff unveiled at Thursday's meeting of the school board's student achievement committee the magnet programs that will be offered at the five schools covered by the federal MSAP grant.

Click here for a handout on the themes at the schools and where they'd fit in the magnet program pathways.

Magnet schools, the new career and technical education high school and a curriculum audit are on the agenda for today's Wake County school board student achievement committee meeting.

Staff will give an update on the federal magnet school grant that Wake will seek. This could include info on the themes for Fox Road, Green and Poe elementary schools and Carroll and Moore Square middle schools.

Staff will also provide information on the program offerings for the CTE high school that Wake hopes to open in 2014. The school board has officially asked county commissioners to acquire the former Coca-Cola facility in South Raleigh.

Commissioners Chairman Paul Coble has asked the school board to pass a resolution committing to the CTE high school for at least seven years before commissioners would consider acquiring the site.

Wake County school administrators highlighted Thursday the various programs that are in place to provide unique academic offerings to the district's schools.

Historically, the magnet schools program has been the way that Wake schools have been beefed up academically. But during Thursday's school board student achievement committee meeting, staff highlighted the STEM schools, the Global Schools, early colleges, Renaissance Schools, K-8 academy, career academies and Title I program.

In a perhaps symbolic decision, the magnet programs office has been renamed magnet and curriculum enhancement.

The assistance that can be provided to non-magnet schools will be the bulk of today's Wake County school board student achievement committee meeting with a little discussion set aside for school start times.

The committee will discuss Wake's curriculum enhancement and school support options. The committee will review existing programs, criteria/selection, school performance, school demographics, growth composites, Title I schools and support, and intervention-at risk support.

This topic comes as staff told board members they would look to see what additional assistance could be offered to schools that aren't getting magnet programs as part of the new federal magnet grant.

Board member Christine Kushner, the committee chairwoman, said the second topic involves seeing how the community can get involved in terms of setting bell schedules. You had all the bell schedule changes this year to implement the new transportation plan and the periodic debates about which start times work better for which ages.

UPDATE

I'll do a separate post on the programs discussed today.