Membership of Wake's transfer appeal panels

There's an interesting mix of Wake County school administrators who are hearing this year's student transfer appeals.

You've got people such as former principals David Ansbacher, Virginia Cardenas and Darryl Fisher and Assistant Superintendent David Holdzkom. You've also got people who've never worked in a school such as Marilyn Moody, senior director for child nutrition; Betty Parker, director of real estate services; and Greg Thomas, director of communications.

The mix is deliberate. Each two-member panel consists of one person with school experience and one person with no school experience.

As you guys recall, school board chairman Ron Margiotta finally got his wish this year and persuaded his colleagues to back having hearing officers instead of board members hear the appeals.

The hearing officers make recommendations. The school board still votes on each request.

Wake could have had strictly people with school experience hearing the appeals. But that option would have meant hiring retired educators, potentially costing as much as $26,000.

The board instead opted last month to use existing school personnel because it wouldn't require any additional costs. But it apparently would have been too hard to have only hearing officers with school experience.

Click here for a list of each panel's membership.

As of Thursday, 4,422 transfer requests had been filed. Growth & Planning, which is providing advice but not serving as hearing officers, has approved 2,934 of the requests.

Of the 1,488 rejected requests, 500 had filed appeals so far. Around 140 appeals were heard Wednesday on the first day.