Most of the 28 speakers at Thursday's public hearing wanted the Wake County school board to make changes and/or delay a vote on adoption of the new student assignment plan.

As noted in today's article, several speakers referenced Tuesday's election results that brought in three new school board members and could result in a new Democratic majority taking office Dec. 6. Speakers asked for a delay until November or December.

"If the board is willing to wait one month until after we see what the results of the next election are, Mr. Hill’s seat, I believe that the board will begin to come together in a much more dignified way and that the decision that is made will reflect the will of the entire community and not just a narrow majority," said the Rev. Tom Rhodes.

It's the self-described "principled principal" running against three challengers who all think they can do a better job of representing District 3 on the Wake County school board.

As noted in today's article, school board member Kevin Hill is emphasizing his education background in his re-election bid. With the departure of Carolyn Morrison in December, Hill says he would potentially be the only board member left with experience as a teacher and principal.

"As a Board of Education, it's important to have some perspectives from an educator with both my experience as a teacher and principal," Hill said.

Could the development of feeder patterns be more of a hold-up on the new Wake County student assignment plan than coming to an agreement on achievement-choice schools?

As noted in today's article, staff's update on the student assignment plan included discussion on achievement schools and a presentation on sample feeder patterns. During the meeting, board members said zilch on the achievement schools but went into detail on the feeder patterns.

"We know this is contentious," Superintendent Tony Tata said to board members in response to the feeder pattern concerns. "This is high stakes. We want your feedback to make this right."

The trend of more Wake County families getting into magnet schools since the end of the old diversity policy is continuing.

School officials say 4,720 out of 8,476 applicants, or 55.7 percent, were accepted into magnet schools for the 2011-12 school year. Last year, 4,450 out of 8,732 applicants were accepted, or 51 percent.

A small part of this year's increase can be attributed to the opening of the new Wake NC State STEM Early College. But that's only 56 kids.

Here's some more details about the Renaissance Model being used to turn around the Wake County school system's four lowest performing elementary schools.

The quick description is that additional resources, including new technology, signing bonuses and performance bonuses, will be used at Barwell Road, Brentwood, Creech Road and Wilburn elementary schools. All four schools happen to have high poverty levels but they were chosen because their passing rates were below 60 percent on state exams last year.

The issue has gotten more attention this week because the school board voted Tuesday on a $950,000 a year bonus plan for the schools using federal Race to the Top money.

Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta's proposal to look at converting magnet schools to a multi-track year-round calendar ran into some bumps on Tuesday.

During the student assignment committee meeting, committee chairman John Tedesco asked whether it might be less challenging to implement the year-round model with some of the magnet themes. For instance, he asked if it would be easier to implement year-round with the International Baccalaureate program than with the Gifted and Talented program.

David Ansbacher, senior director of magnet programs, answered that "it depends."

Here's a quick recap of the Broughton High School and early release votes from today's COW meeting of the Wake County school board .

The board voted 7-1 to recommend keeping Broughton High as an IB school. Most board members praised the quality of Broughton's IB program while Kevin Hill said it would promote inequity and negatively impact IB program at Garner and Millbrook high schools.

Hill argued that there are plenty of schools that would like $180,000 a year to keep their schools competitive.

UPDATE

By a 6-2 vote, the board voted to have the early release days on Friday. Hll and Keith Sutton voted no.

Would keeping the International Baccalaureate program at Broughton High School be an attack on Wake County's magnet school program?

As noted in today's article, some parents at Millbrook High and other magnet schools aren't happy about the prospect of Broughton remaining an IB school. After all, programs such as IB have previously only been offered at magnet schools in Wake.

“It’s the first step toward taking the magnet program down,” said Jody Gross, a parent at Millbrook High.

Now that Judge Pittman has dismissed the lawsuit against the Wake County school board, the agends has been posted for Tuesday's meeting.

The agenda wasn't posted until shortly after the ruling was issued late this afternoon. The ruling means that plans are still in place for the committee of the whole meeting to be in the board conference room and the regular meeting to be in the main board room.

The COW agenda will consist of five topics.

Professional learning communities, suspension and dropout rates and Broughton High School's International Baccalaureate Program will be the topics of today's Wake County school board student achievement committee meeting.

The meeting will open with a discussion of options for PLT time and early release days. The board is supposed to find a way to keep the weekly PLT time without using the weekly Wednesday early dismissals that made the time possible this year.

The board is running out of options now that it adopted bell schedules for 2010-11 that no longer include the extra 10 minutes that had been added to the day.