The difference between a guarantee and a priority could be a big deal for Wake County families who apply for magnet schools or during the first transfer application period next year.

Based on last week's discussion, staff has placed in both the magnet and selection criteria a priority for applicants who are not in an entry grade to go to the same school as a sibling. This came after board member Susan Evans asked about adding this kind of priority.

There's also now officially a transfer priority that fleshes out wording in the draft assignment plan about dealing with requests from rising 6th- and 9th-graders for feeders from the choice plan.

It looks like there's still going to be a priority for Wake County students from high-performing nodes to get into magnet schools, but there won't be a transfer priority for applicants from low-performing schools to get into high-performing ones.

Both issues became intertwined during last week's student assignment work session as board members and staff worked through the details of the draft 2013-14 student assignment plan. The final vote will come during Tuesday's meeting.

During last week's discussion, you had discussion about how far the board should go to keep students from leaving some schools and who should get priority for magnet access.

There seems to be widespread agreement among Wake County school board members that enrollment caps, especially the new partial caps, are a good idea.

But as noted in today's article, board members were hesitant at Tuesday's policy committee meeting to sign off on proposed revisions to the capping policy. The main revision requested by staff was to insert new wording allowing the superintendent to implement partial caps to go along with existing wording permitting the board to set full caps.

“This is one of the items that I think all of us found pleasantly surprising in the proposal that we all sort of agreed to," said board member John Tedesco of the partial caps.

How hard should the Wake County school system go to keep siblings together at the same school?

During this month's student assignment discussion, school board member Susan Evans asked about the proposed rules for the first transfer period that guarantee that rising kindergarten, sixth-grade and ninth-grade siblings can go the same non-base school as their older sibling.

"Is it possible to include all siblings and not just the entry grades?" Evans asked.

Wake County school board member Jim Martin is proposing inserting a transfer selection priority to help families who feel their situation is "hopeless" at low-performing school.

During Tuesday's school board work session, staff was reviewing the selection priorities for the first transfer application period (page numbers 7-8 on this document). This would be the new period from Feb. 18 to March 1 when families could request a transfer to any school in the district that has space. Tansportation wouldn't be guaranteed.

Martin said he wanted to bring up the issue of helping students from low-performing nodes get into high-performing schools. He said the issue was raised by several of his constituents.

This week marks what could be a potentially major week in the history of Wake County student assignment.

As noted in today's article, the school board's policy committee will meet Tuesday to begin discussion of rewriting the student assignment policy to reintroduce diversity as one of the components. On Saturday, the school board will go over the 2013-14 draft student assignment plan that could potentially be rewritten to reflect the diversity changes.

One of the questions the school board will face is how to word the diversity component in the assignment policy. Should it be a general statement, as proposed by staff, or a more explicit document that would have a variety of income and achievement targets?

Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata literally played the good soldier at today's press conference as he didn't criticize the school board's call to develop a base school student assignment plan.

Tata defended the choice plan, repeatedly saying it had produced "high parental satisfaction," pointing to this handout showing that student transfer requests are down this year compared to past years. But Tata said they'll do what the board wants.

“We work at the direction of the board," Tata said when asked if he felt the vote was a "slap in the face" to him. "We are taking the board guidance and we’re going to move forward and we are going to provide the best possible solutions for parents and students. We know that we implemented a plan that provided a high level of parental satisfaction so we’ll try to increase that satisfaction going forward.”

It's a new Wake County school board but the same process for dealing with student transfer appeals.

The board will continue the process begun in 2010 of having staff hear the two-minute appeals with the full board deciding on each case after getting a report from the panel. It was a change that had been pushed for by then-school board chairman Ron Margiotta, who didn't think board members should have to sit in on the appeal panels.

Chief Transformation Officer Judy Peppler told the board on Tuesday that they had received 3,557 transfer requests, representing 2.5 percent of the students registered for this fall. She said that percentage is running slightly behind what it's been at this point in time in recent years.

How many of those 3,557 transfer requests are rejected by staff and appealed to the board remains to be seen.

Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata gave hopeful messages today about the state budget and the magnet school review during his news conference.

Tata said Wake has been "working very hard" with the General Assembly on the budget. Tata said he's hopeful of what he believes will be a good budget discussion over the next several weeks with legislators to hopefully lessen the impact of lost federal stimulus funds.

Tata said he's been talking to state legislators since January to articulate the school district's budget needs.

Wake County families may want to make sure their before-school and after-school care providers are ready to handle some proposed changes to school bus procedures this fall.

Revised draft regulations from school transportation staff would now require daycare centers and after-school care centers to have staff present to load and unload students. Approval of transportation to these facilities would now have to be requested and reapproved annually.

Those are just some of these proposed changes to policy and R&P that staff presented to the school board's policy committee on Tuesday.