Thursday night's community mass meeting at Martin Street Baptist Church dealt with the new Wake County student assignment plan, getting mediation for the school board protesters and assailing the conditions at Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, most the focus of the meeting led by the state NAACP and the Great Schools in Wake Coalition was on complaints about the assignment plan. The crowd of around 50 people, mainly supporters of the old diversity policy, were urged to contact school leaders to change the plan.

"If you let the plane fly in the air and you don’t make those course corrections that you feel need to be made in order to make it a more successful plan for all students so we have a fair and diverse and well-funded education for all students, then shame on us if we don’t advocate for the changes to make it happen," said Patty Williams of Great Schools in Wake.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

As part of today's article on Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata's one-year anniversary on the job, he sat with the N&O for an extensive interview.

Here are some highlights from the interview, which touched on a variety of topics, including student assignment, the budget and how Tata evaluates his job performance.

The big topic of the moment is the implementation of the new student assignment plan. Tata was asked about the complaints from parents of charter school and magnet school students than the rules have changed on them since they can't just go to a base school now.

How worried should the Wake County school system be about how the new student assignment plan is impacting the magnet schools?

As noted in today's article, the Democratic board members expressed concern Tuesday about the sharp decline in magnet applications. They also raised concerns that not enough academically identified students got accepted into Carnage and Ligon middle schools, which operate the AG Basics magnet theme.

“It seems to me that demand for magnets has gone down by half,” said new Democratic school board member Christine Kushner in remarks to staff members. “I’m concerned about that decline. I hope it’s something you are paying attention to.”

The Wake County school board will tackle a variety of issues at today's work session meeting.

First up is an update on the magnet school selection round results. Democratic school board members have complained that they didn't get the data, which shows an apparent big drop in applications, until after the last board meeting when they agreed to go forward with the new student assignment plan.

One thing to check is which magnet schools saw a noticeable drop in applications.

UPDATE

Click here for a school district press release that includes links to school-by-school and historical magnet school application results.

Longtime Wake County school board attorney Ann Majestic is the focus of a front-page article in last week's issue of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

The profile details how Majestic started a legal career that will lead to her in April receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys.

Much of the article focuses on Majestic's work in Wake, including her successful efforts to win over the initially suspicious Republican board majority in 2009. The article also talks about her personal views on the role of socioeconomic diversity in student assignment.

The liberal/progressive Great Schools in Wake Coalition is being praised for helping oust the Republican majority on the Wake County school board.

In this week's issue of the liberal Independent Weekly, GSIW received one of the publication's 2012 Citizen Awards. The article cites Great Schools' various efforts over the past two years such as its white papers, community forums and having members speak at school board meetings.

"When the 2011 elections in Wake County resulted in a stunning defeat for the Republicans, with all five school board seats on the ballot won by pro-diversity candidates, GSIW was the major factor in the outcome," according to the article by Bob Geary.

The initial indications are that there was a big drop in the number of Wake County magnet school applicants this year.

School officials announced today that 1,755 out of 4,296 magnet school applicants, or 40.9 percent, were placed into a magnet school for the 2012-13 school year. School officials say 2,766 students have been placed on a wait list to get into their first-choice magnet school. (Some people were placed in a second-choice or lower magnet school.)

School officials say it's difficult to compare this year's totals with last year's number because 1,808 preassigned rising magnet sixth- and ninth-graders didn't have to apply.

Starting at 3 p.m. today, Wake County families can go online to check if their magnet school application was approved for this fall.

If you can wait, application results were mailed to students on Thursday.

The information should help families make the decision about what to do when the choice selection round begins Tuesday. But if you get a seat in the selection round, it means you give up your new magnet seat.

The issue of Michael Alves' unannounced private meeting with the new Democratic members of the Wake County school board won't seem to go away.

The issue was revisited with some heated comments during Tuesday's board meeting. The discussion, more of which is detailed later in the post, shows the continuing wariness between the Republican and Democratic members.

More recently, Terry Stoops, director of education studies for the conservative John Locke Foundation, brought up the issue in a Thursday blog post.

Is there enough support on the Wake County school board to eliminate the selection priority for applicants from high-performing nodes to get into magnet schools?

During last week's work session, school board members Jim Martin and John Tedesco found themselves on the same side for calling for that change in the selection criteria. On the other hand, board member Christine Kushner argued for leaving that priority in place.

With parents set to find out Friday if their magnet applications were approved, time is short if a change is planned for this year.