Is Leesville Road Middle School a safer place since it was converted to a year-round calendar in July?

That's an argument made in a press release Tuesday by BiggerPicture4Wake and at Tuesday's CEM meeting by supporters of keeping Leesville Middle on a year-round calendar. BiggerPicture says that "incidences of violent behavior and school suspensions have dramatically decreased" since conversion.

For instance, BiggerPicture says Leesville Middle recorded 370 suspensions involving 188 students during the 2008-09 school year. But since July 1, the group says there have been 90 suspensions involving 62 students.

It looks like new and old Wake County school board members have found common ground when it comes to calling for a review of the district's zero tolerance discipline policies.

As noted in today's article, Keith Sutton and John Tedesco are among the board members who think that zero tolerance is resulting in too many suspensions and keeping too many students out of school. They're calling for a review that school board chairman Ron Margiotta agrees is needed.

"We have a very strong majority that wants to review the old policies for changes, including those on discipline," Margiotta said.

The SAS report was also mentioned in an op-ed piece urging Wake to find a better way to discipline students.

In today's op-ed piece, the authors say the new school board needs to address why Wake issues so many long-term suspensions, especially compared to Charlotte. The op-piece says both Enloe and Garner high schools gave more long-term suspensions last year than 107 of the state's 115 school districts.

Durham Public Schools posted their planned revisions to the district's suspension and magnet policies on their website after the last school board meeting in September. There was still some debate over the changes, which were further discussed at a DPS committee meeting today.

The suspension policy, hotly debated years ago, is up for revision to meet new General Assembly guidelines. The changes are minor, but strengthen rules for parental notification and due process.

The magnet policy revisions will affect assignment preferences for rising sixth-graders planning to enroll in George Watts' Montessori school as well as from the Morehead Montessori elementary to the new Lakewood Y middle school montessori, scheduled to open next year.

To view the changes (the changes are bolded and made with strike-outs on the original policies) and submit your comments to the board, click here.

The days of Wake handing over the education of long-term suspended students to outside groups has come to an end.

As noted in today's article by Ray Martin, Wednesday night saw the graduation of the last class of students from Richard Milburn High School, which was the largest outside vendor for Wake's long-term suspended students. They and other providers were phased out to save money.

School officials said they could do the job cheaper in house.

Do schools in Wake issue long-term suspensions for students more quickly than they should?

As noted in today's article, that's a concern raised by some groups as Wake has one of the higher long-term suspension rates in the state. It's more of an issue now that Wake is proposing to eliminate the alternative programs for long-term suspended students in favor of offering them online courses from home.

Click here to view the 2007-08 statewide school-by-school suspension data. Click here to view the 2003-04 through 2006-07 statewide school-by-school data.

Life could be rough in Wake schools this upcoming school year.

As noted in today's article, the district is looking at some cost-cutting measures that could affect the daily quality of life for students and teachers. Supt. Del Burns said they're at the point now where Central Services (anything not school based) is so "lean" that they can't make further cuts without having a direct impact on the classroom.

“We’re at the point now where it has a direct impact on schools,” Burns told school board members on Thursday. “It has a direct impact on classrooms.”

The new statewide school crime and suspension figures are out.

Wake is touting how its rate of reported crime and violence of 14.55 acts per 1,000 high school students is lower than the state average. Wake is also touting that its short-term suspension rate of 30.4 per 100 high school students is lower than the state average.

What's not so nice is the 4.5 percent increase in Wake's long-term suspensions. But expulsions are down.

I suspect a lot of you folks are interesting in school-by-school crime stats. Those aren't part of the main report. You can find them here.