The crime rate, suspension rate and high school dropout rate all improved this past school year in the Wake County school system.

New figures released by the state today show that Wake's dropout rate decreased from 3.53 percent in 2009-10 to 3.25 percent in 2010-11. Wake had 1,386 dropouts, down from 1,689 in the 2007-08 school year.

The report notes that Wake had among the largest 3-year dropout rate decreases among the 115 school districts.

N.C. State University researchers have found certain Android smartphones to be more vulnerable to attack than others. By exploiting security weaknesses in some of the pre-loaded apps found on the devices, hackers can record phone calls, send costly texts, or wipe your settings and data.

Is it case closed for any further need to review the school resource officer  program in Wake County's schools?

As noted in Saturday's article, Superintendent Tony Tata is giving at least partial credit for this year's drop in school crime on the presence of the SROs. Combined with the response from the survey of middle school and high school principals and assistant principals, Tata doesn't feel there's a need to make major changes.

"We’ve got a lot of things we can work on here in Wake County and I think that school resource officers is an area where we can work on the margin but I think these statistics show its effectiveness and I think the response from the principals and assistant principals show its effectiveness," Tata said at Friday's news conference.

Here's a condensed recap of today's press conference held by Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata.

Tata reported that both the overall rate of incidents of school crime and of violent crime in particular had dropped. There were 41 reported violent incidents this past school year, compared to 99 the prior year.

“Make no mistake,” Tata. “It’s my belief that one violent crime incident is one too many but we’re moving in the right direction here.”

Here's an abbreviated recap of today's Wake County school board meeting with more to come later.

A decision on the grading practices was delayed until Aug. 16 to give more time for public comment and to allow staff to report back on additional information on the rationale for going back to letter grades in grades 3-5 and to learn more about how behaviors would be incorporated into the policy.

But the signs are that the new grading policy will pass with school board vice chairman John Tedesco strongly advocating for the revision. But you could still see some revisions made to the R&P.

Is Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta now singing a different tune on the issue of reviewing the school resource officer program?

In an interview Wednesday on the Bill LuMaye Show on WPTF, Margiotta was effusive in this praise of the school resource officer program as being necessary now that society has changed. He said he's hoping Superintendent Tony Tata's review will not result in any change of the program.

"I have some serious concerns with the fact that we're even considering making any changes," Margiotta said. "That's my personal feeling."

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

How much change, if any, will be made in the way school resource officers operate in Wake County schools?

As noted in today's article, Wake Superintendent Tony Tata is expected to report back in September to the school board on the survey they requested of the effectiveness of the SRO program. It's a prelude to efforts to revise this memorandum of understanding that governs how the SROs operate in the schools.

While a majority of the board asked for the survey and indicated they wanted to review the MOU, it's uncertain how far they're willing to go to change the agreement. It's also uncertain how much the various law enforcement enforcement agencies would be willing to change.

It looks like, for now, high schools in Cary and Raleigh will still have police officers assigned to them for the 2011-12 school year

After a lengthy debate, the Wake County school board unanimously agreed tonight to continue their contracts with the Raleigh and Cary police departments for school resource officers for the high schools. As part of the vote, Superintendent Tony Tata was directed to come back in three months with a review of the SRO program.

But before the vote, some board members talked about delaying the vote and what would be necessary should they terminate the deals.

DroidKungFu gives hackers full control over an infected device, and has ninja-like ability to avoid detection by mobile anti-virus software.

N.C. State researchers, assistant professor Xuxian Jiang and Ph.D. student Yajin Zhou, identified the new Android malware, called DroidKungFu, which is spreading via several Android app stores and forums based in China. While they have not discovered the malware beyond Chinese sources yet, the report stresses the search is in the early 'grasshopper' stage.

Yes, again, Sony has been hacked. This time hacker group Lulz Security is taking credit for the attack on SonyMusic.co.jp.

"This isn't a 1337 h4x0r, we just want to embarrass Sony some more," the hackers said in a note mocking Sony which also delivered a warning of two other vulnerable data bases.

Does it make you think twice ... or thrice about your online accounts?