At the first meeting today of the new Wake County school board facilities committee, members voted to recommend abandoning the Forest Ridge High School site in favor of looking at two alternatives in Rolesville.

But the committee recommendation, which could be voted on by the full board next week, came after staff warned that it could cost $15.5 million more to abandon Forest Ridge. You can expect to hear that number a lot before the board votes on the recommendation.

The biggest chunk, $10 million, is estimated to come from acquiring additional classroom trailers to deal with overcrowding caused by delaying the school. It's estimated that scrapping Forest Ridge for a new site would push the opening of the school back two years to 2014.

The road toward the potential elimination of Wake County's school diversity policy will get going on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the current student ssignment policy will be the topic of discussion of the first meeting of the new school board policy committee. The policy committee was given the charge of reviewing the proposed changes to the assignment policy that would eliminate all references to diversity in focusing on neighborhood schools.

But before the policy can be changed, the board members will receive an overview of the current Policy 6200 "in order for Board members to begin identifying possible changes," according to the meeting agenda.

The money was flying in last fall's historic Wake County school board elections.

As noted in today's article, campaign finance reports showed that more than $340,000 in hard and soft money was spent during the school board campaign. Conservative businessmen Bob Luddy and Art Pope were easily the biggest contributors, providing $38,000 that either went directly to candidates or to the Wake County Republican Party's campaign efforts.

Critics of the new board are saying it confirms their fears that those who are hostile to public education are behind the new board majority. Luddy said it's "laughable" to say he's directing the board while Pope said it's ridiculous for the other side to make him a "right wing boogeyman."

Today should be a long day for some Wake County school board members.

It will start off at 9 a.m. with the board's facility committee meeting. It will wrap up sometime this evening with the community engagement meeting at Holly Springs High that could end at 9 p.m. or later.

This will mark the first committee meeting of the new board.

The Wake Education Partnership is laying out the potential challenges of assigning Wake County students to their closest school

Today, the WEP released the second issue of "Understand Your Schools," which it says is in response to the new school board majority's efforts to change student assignment. In a nutshell, the WEP found that any proposal that relies on sending students solely to their closest schools would quickly create dozens of capacity problems.

The WEP says that the new school board majority knows it's not possible to assign all students to their closest school as it would require tens of thousands of reassignments. But it says its review is still important in light of what could be coming.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST 

Will the uncertainty about the future of Wake County's magnet school program affect the number of applications this year?

The online application period for magnet schools and calendar schools began today and runs through Feb. 28. The magnet program is in a state of flux as some of the new school board majority wants to revamp things, spreading magnets around the county.

School board member John Tedesco has talked about phasing in the changes over a three-year period beginning in 2011-12. But will that make some families reluctant to apply for the 2010-11 school year?

The Wake County school board's student achievement committee will also not be meeting this month.

School board member Deborah Prickett, the new chairwoman of the student achievement committee, wants the group to meet in the early evening hours. Previously, it has met from 11 a.m to 1 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.

Prickett is looking at a 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. time slot to reduce time conflicts with her day job as character education consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction.

It looks more and more like this year's races for county commissioner will turn into a battle over the Wake County school system.

As noted in today's article by Thomas Goldsmith, Republicans running for commissioner are backing the new school board majority while Democrats are opposing the end of the diversity policy. At stake could be how much financial support the school board majority gets to implement the changes it hopes to make.

"I don't approve of that all," said Democratic Commissioner Lindy Brown of eliminating the diversity policy in the article. "I don't see the business community or the citizens of Wake County going that route."

The new Wake County school board majority will begin holding committee meetings this week, but it will take a little longer for the student assignment committee to get going.

School board member John Tedesci said he's in the process of getting nominations from the other board members for which members of the public should be on the new committee. Tedesco, the chairman of the new committee, hopes the group will begin meeting next month.

Tedesco explained that he's asking all the board members to suggest three names. He's working with Carolyn Morrison, vice chairwoman of the committee, to pick one community member from each board district.

Do you have a First Amendment right not to audibly say your name and address to speak at a Wake County school board meeting?

That's the contention made by the ACLU of North Carolina in a letter sent this week to the school board. In the letter, Katherine Lewis Parker, the group's legal director, writes that having to to say your name and address out loud could put speakers in fear of being retaliated against for their views.

"We believe that requiring individuals to audibly state their names and addresses in order to be permitted to speak at their own school board meetings is a form of censorship of the speaker's message based on content, in violation of the First Amendment," Parker writes.