The Wake County school system's final transfer application period is now in progress.

Parents began receiving today an “official notice of school assignment” letter from the school system listing their child’s 2013-14 school assignment. The letter triggers a window of 10 business days in which parents who don’t like the assignment can file a transfer request.

Transfers might be approved for reasons such as childcare issues, student health concerns, school employees who want their children to be at the same school or on the same calendar and parents who want to keep their children on the same calendar.

Click here for information on the transfer process, including how to download the form.

Wake County families can now go online to find out if their first transfer period application was approved.

Click here for the link to access your results. You can't appeal a rejection but you are put on the wait list for your first-choice school.

The first transfer period, an attempt to keep parts of the now-discarded choice plan, allowed parents to request any non-magnet school in the county. Some people were applying for their calendar-option school, or to their base school, or for the feeder school from the choice plan.

The only transfer requests that were supposed to be guaranteed were those for incoming K, 6th and 9th graders trying to go to the same non-base school currently attended by their siblings and existing students who didn't want to be reassigned from their current school into one of the three new schools.

The hybrid of the choice plan/address-based plan kicks off today with the start of the new first transfer application period.

As noted in today's article, it carries over how in the choice plan you could request as many as five schools. But there are some big differences, like how you won't get transportation for most of the schools you request now.

You've got the people who will request a calendar-option school, with transportation provided.

Wake County school officials say they approved all 1,159 requests from families to return to their base school for the 2013-14 school year.

Some critics of Wake's abandonment of the choice plan were skeptical that the district would be able to honor every request made during the January back to base declaration period. Their concerns turned out to be unfounded this year.

In addition, school officials say most of the people returning to base will have the same as or shorter bus ride times for this fall.

The Wake County school board's policy committee is schedule to review a bunch of policies at today's meeting.

What potentially could be the most heated discussion is a review of Policy 8101: Undesignated Operating Fund Balance. That's the one that theoretically limits how much of the fund balance that the school board can keep before returning the excess to county commissioners.

The school board traditionally waives the policy with a two-thirds majority to keep the excess fund balance. Politically, the board majority should have the votes once the District 1 vacant is filled to waive it again, but at least some minority members are unhappy.

The 2013-14 student assignment plan is now becoming more real for Wake County families.

Between today and Monday, currently enrolled students will receive their initial notice of school assignment for the upcoming school year. This notice grandfathers students at their current schools with their current transportation unless they're reassigned to one of the three new schools — Richland Creek Elementary, Rolesville Middle and Rolesville High.

The notice will have rising sixth- and ninth-graders being assigned to their base schools. This means that magnet students will have to submit an application, whose approval will be guaranteed, to stay in the program, and that people who want the choice plan feeders will need to request it in the first transfer period.

For families who've been oblivious to the recent student assignment discussion, the notices could be a rude surprise.

Wake County parents may want to consider becoming active PTA members in the future in case it can reduce the chances of their children being reassigned.

During the last board meeting, school board member Jim Martin talked about the "frank conversations" he had with parents at a recent tour of Dillard Drive Elementary School in Raleigh. He said it highlighted to him the need to consider the impact of reassignment on PTAs when they work on future assignment plans.

“It’s pretty clear that in many of our schools we need to look at where the PTA leadership in the schools comes from because we think a lot about reassignments as they impact families, which we need to and they really do," Martin said.

The new grandfathering rules approved Tuesday by the Wake County school board provide more stability for families than historically has been the case.

It will become evident when the notice of initial school assignments for the 2013-14 school year go out to students between Jan. 2-7. Unless a student is being reassigned to one of the three new schools — Rolesville High, Rolesville Middle and Richland Creek Elementary — Wake is assuming you'll stay at your current school for the 2013-14 school year.

Let's follow the example of students who live in the nodes being reassigned  to an existing school, such as those who being moved to River Bend Elementary to free up spots for magnet applicants at Fox Road Elementary.

Seven of the 13 Wake County schools on the full-cap list have hit their figures to stop taking new students for the rest of the school year.

As this handout shows, Brooks, Conn, Davis Drive, Hunter, Lacy, Mills Park and Wiley elementary schools are now at the figure to trigger the full enrollment cap restrictions.  New families who move into the base will be given three other schools to pick from for this school year.

Originally, Davis Drive Elementary's full-cap target was 990 students. But Laura Evans, senior director of student assignment, said it was lowered to 970 — the school's current enrollment — after Principal Chip Mack said he couldn't take any more students.

During today's student assignment work session, the Wake County school board decided not to make any additional changes to the 2013-14 plan.

This also means the board will leave, as is, these selection priorities for the newly created first transfer period that were recommended by staff. This includes leaving as the seventh priority requests from rising 6th- and ninth-graders to get the feeder from the choice plan.

It wasn't moved up because board members and staff raised concerns about capacity issues and of the impact of bumping it ahead of the calendar match priorities.

UPDATE

The board voted 5-4 to approve the assignment plan. It went along party lines with Democrats voting yes and Republcians voting no.

But all the Republicans, except Deborah Prickett, crossed party lines to waive board policy so that the enrollment caps could be implemented immedidately.