Is an out-of-school suspension for five days and being arrested by police for disorderly conduct or assault charges the proper punishment for last week's water balloon prank at Enloe High School?

The Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children is questioning the response by the school district and Raleigh police. But as noted in today's column by Barry Saunders, Wake school officials say suspensions were issued not for throwing balloons but disobeying the rules.

“Some students — let’s be specific, a small percentage of them — simply were not following the rules," said Wake schools spokeswoman Renee McCoy in the column. "They had been warned the day before by the principal on the intercom” that no disruptive pranks would be tolerated.

UPDATE

See update at end of post in which Calla Wright sent a new message Tuesday, copied to the media, requesting a meeting with Wake County school leaders to discuss the Enloe suspensions and arrests.

Wake County school board member will race off from today's joint meeting with county commissioners to attend the student achievement committee meeting.

The agenda shows the committee will hear a presentation about alternative learning centers and in-school suspension. They'll then review school discipline data, focusing on final 2011-12 data and the first semester of this school year.

The committee will also review the recommendations from the School Health Advisory Council. It was tabled from the last meeting.

The Wake County school board's student achievement committee is scheduled to discuss today the latest recommendations from the School Health Advisory Council, including the controversial one on banning the sale of unhealthy foods.

Since the SHAC report came out last week, school board members have been getting a steady stream of comments from booster groups warning that restricting what they can sell at concession stands will harm their ability to raise funds to support athletic programs.

The response was so much that school board vice chairwoman Christine Kushner, also chair of the student achievement committee, quipped last week that they should invite the booster groups to the superintendent search feedback meetings.

The Wake County school system is going to have to come up with some more money to implement new programs as part of a settlement of a complaint over how it serves students with disabilities who receive lengthy suspensions.

In this July complaint, Advocates for Children's Services and attorney Mark Trustin had charged that Wake was failing to provide an appropriate alternative education to five students who missed 10 or more days due to suspensions in the 2011-12 school year.

Under this settlement agreement announced today, Wake will provide this summer a free, six-week program offering 60 hours of individualized services in math, literacy, reading, and social skills, via “in-person, live, direct instruction by a highly-qualified general and special education staff." This is open to any students with disabilities who received lengthy suspension in 2011-12, not just the five in the complaint.

Newly released figures today show that the dropout rate, student suspension rate and school violence rate all improved this past school year for the Wake County school system.

In the 2011-12 school year, Wake had 1,099 reported criminal acts, or 7.531 acts per 1,000 students. The prior school year, it was 1,132 acts or 7.952 acts per 1,000 students.

Click here for this year's school-by-school figures. Click here for last year's school-by-school figures.

The start of the Keith Sutton era as Wake County school board chairman is expected to begin Tuesday.

The board will hold an organizational meeting on Tuesday to select a chair and vice chair for the next year. Sutton, the board's vice chairman, said that Kevin Hill has told him he won't seek another term as board chairman.

While Sutton won't outright say he's running for chairman, it's pretty clear if you read between the lines.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata came out with a three-point message at his State of the Schools address on Thursday.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, Tata talked enthusiastically about the gains that Wake made on state exams. But he warned that the results could drop as Wake and the rest of the state switches to the new common core curriculum and tests this school year.

The third prong of Tata's speech was the need "to make a compelling case" for the passage of a school bond issue in 2013.

Former Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta is being praised for showing "what conservatives accomplished for Wake schools" in the latest issue of Civitas Review.

The magazine article published by the conservative Civitas Institute praises Margiotta and the former Republican school board majority for various accomplishments in their two-year tenure. The list includes raising the graduation rate, passing the new choice-based student assignment plan, increasing minority placement in Algebra I, lowering student suspensions and not laying off teachers.

"Liberals and their allies like to stereotype conservatives as penny-pinchers who don’t care about students," writes Civitas President Francis DeLuca, the author of the article. "But Ron Margiotta and his conservative allies showed how false that image is."

Is it a conspiracy or coincidence that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is spending a lot of its time investigating various complaints filed against the Wake County school system?

As noted in today's article, OCR has used its discretion to launch investigations of three complaints against Wake in the past two years. The scope of the investigations means OCR is looking at how students are assigned, how they’re suspended, what athletics opportunities they’re provided and whether they’re getting important notices in Spanish.

Depending on your point of view, they're welcome probes or a case of the feds butting in too much into Wake County's business.

The Wake County school system is now facing another potential civil rights investigation.

This complaint filed today by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Advocates for Children’s Services charges that Wake is violating the civil rights of Hispanic families by not providing them adequate translation services.

The complaint asks the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to require Wake to make changes, such as providing documents about suspensions and special education services in Spanish to limited English proficient parnets.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR WAKE'S STATEMENT