The school system has announced it's implementing an immediate hiring freeze.

Starting today, all vacant position in the school system will be frozen through June 30. Principals will be allowed to fill teacher vacancies with temporary contracts expiring June 30.

School officials say other exceptions to the hiring freeze will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

It's time to see if the state Supreme Court will end the waiting and rule today on the year-round lawsuit.

If a ruling is issued, it would probably go out around 11:30 a.m. Click here to view the web site.

Oral arguments were heard in December so it would be kind of early to get a ruling now. Estimates of three months to a year have been tossed around as to when the case could be resolved.

UPDATE

No ruling today. Next potential date is March 20.

It was a pretty gung-ho crowd at Thursday night's meeting in Holly Springs.

As noted in today's article, the twin goals pitched at the meeting were to get involved in this fall's school board elections and to back state legislation for at-large board seats.

Before I get started, Wake Schools Community Alliance now has a web site up that can be reached by clicking here. They're using it to help enlist people for this fall's campaign.

Wake, like the rest of the state, has seen a decline in the dropout rate based on new numbers released today.

In the 2007-08 school year, Wake saw 1,689 kids drop out of high school, compared to 1,647 the prior year. But due to the increase in Wake's high school enrollment, the dropout rate dipped from 4.21 percent to 4.17 percent.

One predominantly black Raleigh charter school got a reprieve today while another is still hanging in the wind.

The state Board of Education voted today to give PreEminent Charter a three-year renewal to see if scores improve. But the board delayed taking action on Torchlight Academy until they get some additional information.

Torchlight could still wind up not having its charter renewed, which would basically mean the school would close at the end of this school year.

At-large school board elections for Wake are back before the General Assembly.

State Sen. Neal Hunt filed S-72 on Wednesday calling for four of the nine Wake school board seats to be elected on an at-large, countywide basis. The other five seats would continue to be elected on a district basis.

Hunt, who introduced a similar bill in 2007, said the purpose of his legislation is to allow voters to have a say on a majority of the school board seats.

You guys may not all want to rush over to tonight's meeting at Holly Springs Town Hall.

As noted previously, representatives from several opposition groups will meet at 6 p.m. to see if they can work together to change the school system. It just might not be possible to accommodate all the people who want to attend.

If you're considering applying this month for a magnet school, traditional-calendar school or year-round school, please let me know.

Please send an e-mail message to keung.hui@newsobserver.com with your contact info.

Is the new reassignment plan unfriendly to families?

As noted in today's article, yesterday's vote on the plan was far from unanimous. In what's become an annual event for him, Ron Margiotta voted against the plan as he accused his colleagues of not listening to parents.

"Reassignment should be used solely for the purpose of filling new schools," Margiotta said. "I can’t vote for a plan that’s so family unfriendly.”

For those who don't get the North Raleigh News or Midtown Raleigh News, there's a Q&A today with Dana Cope about the new Children's Political Action Committee.

Cope has got some big goals for the PAC. In particular, he thinks the PAC's ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to run third-party advocacy ads in this fall's school board elections could have a major impact.

While it might not be the best analogy, imagine a Swift Boat-like ad campaign being mounted against certain candidates this fall.